Academic impact of the COVID-19 in Cuban dental students

Abstract

Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic has impacted in different scopes of higher education, that is why is necessary to generate researches that contribute with evidences on this topic. Aim: To validate a scale for evaluating the Cuban dental students' perceptions on the possible academic impact of the COVID-19. Methods: Instrumental and cross-sectional study. Starting from a Spanish language instrument validated in Peruvian medical and other university students, the first step of the validation through the expert’s criteria was performed. After, a factorial exploratory analysis (FEA), by not pondered minima squares, was performed and the internal consistency was measured through Alpha of Cronbach. Results: 159 students were suitable for analysis; 60.38 % were men and the mean age was 21.86 years. All items were evaluated in a favorable way by the expert’s criteria. From the initial scale, the preliminary analysis suggested to eliminate the item 6. The relevance of the FEA was justified with the KMO index (0.801) and Bartlett's test (344.8; gl=15; p=0.000) being acceptable and significant. An Alpha of Cronbach's coefficient of 0.915 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.90-0.91 was obtained; indicating that the consistency of the instrument is good. Conclusions: A single factor scale measuring Cuban dental students' perception of the possible academic impact of the COVID-19 was validated.

Keywords

• estudios de validación
• covid-19
• estudiantes de estomatología
• análisis factorial.