MedEdPORTAL (Sep 2015)
Critical Synthesis Package: Penn State College of Medicine Professionalism Questionnaire
Abstract
Abstract This Critical Synthesis Package contains: (1) a Critical Analysis of the psychometric properties and application to health sciences education for the Penn State Questionnaire of Professionalism (PSQP); and (2) a copy of the PSQP, scoring key, and manual developed by George F. Blackall, PsyD, MBA, Steven A. Melnick, PhD, and Glenda H. Shoop, PhD. The PSQP is designed to assess attitudes toward professionalism in medical students, residents, clinical faculty, and biomedical sciences faculty on four parallel professionalism questionnaires, with each population receiving their own distinct version. The professionalism questionnaires are a set of self-reported assessments with 5-point Likert-scales anchored from low to high, and respondents choose from a range of responses (never, little, some, much, great deal) for each question. There are 36 items on the professionalism questionnaires representing six a priori dimensions adopted from the American Board of Internal Medicine. These dimensions are labeled: Accountability, Altruism, Duty, Excellence, Honesty and Integrity, and Respect. Participants are invited to rate the extent to which statements describing the behavioral conduct of others reflects their definition of professionalism. The PSQP has also been reliably administered across multiple samples of diverse medical student populations. While the PSQP has strong internal validity evidence, and good support for the factor structure of the instrument, there are areas of concerns. The first concern is that the anchors to the Likert-type scale are very different from the standard agree to disagree, or other anchor formats commonly found in other measures. This calls to question whether participant responses are at all impacted by the novel anchor system. The other concern is that it isn't clear how to interpret high and low scores on the PSQP. The authors do not address whether higher scores on the PSQP means that participants have a stronger definition of professionalism and are therefore more professional, or what it may mean to score low or high in general. Further research should consider gathering additional validity and reliability evidence by administering the PSQP to the intended target populations across multiple samples. Overall, the PSQP is a good assessment tool worth administering.
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