Development and Psychometric Analysis of the Measure of Perceived Adherence to the Principles of Medical Ethics in Clinical Educational Settings: Trainee Version (PAMETHIC-CLIN-T)

Abstract

Arezoo Toupchian,1 Parvin Sarbakhsh,2 Reza Ghaffari,1 Abdolhassan Kazemi,3 Hassan Mahmoodi,4 Abdolreza Shaghaghi1 1Medical Education Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; 2Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; 3Medical Philosophy and History Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; 4Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Research Institute for Health Development, Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences, Sanandaj, IranCorrespondence: Abdolreza ShaghaghiMedical Education Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz 51665-417, IranEmail [email protected]: This study was conducted to develop and assess psychometric properties of the “Measure of Perceived Adherence to the Principles of Medical Ethics in Clinical Educational Settings: trainee version (PAMETHIC-CLIN-T)” as a data collection tool to enhance research performance rigor in future medical ethics studies.Patients and Methods: A multi-tiered six stage procedure was applied to develop the PAMETHIC-CLIN-T and assess its psychometric properties in a sample of Iranian medical science undergraduate students (n=263). The final constructed item pool contained 16 questions with the response options in five Likert-type categories. The higher total score indicated better compliance with the ethics and professional conduct regulations. Internal consistency reliability was examined and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with direct oblimin rotation and principal components analysis (PCA) were carried out to reduce the overall constructed items into latent factors based on commonalities within the data set.Findings: Factor analysis results revealed a 4-factor solution. All 16 items had factor loading greater than absolute value of 0.3 that accounted for 60.57% of the variance. The value of Kaiser Meyer Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy for factor analysis (0.909) and also Bartlett’s test of sphericity (X2=1630.63, df=120, P-value< 0.001) approved interpretability of the EFA output.Conclusion: Feasibility testing and psychometric analysis of the constructed scale yielded research evidence to support a four-factor model to be applied in future studies about the extent of perceived adherence to the principles of medical ethics in clinical educational settings.Keywords: ethics, medical education, hidden curriculum

Keywords

• ethics
• medical education
• hidden curriculum