Abstract
Background: The need for education accountability in today's society in order to fulfill the social mission of universities is more than ever. The aim of this study was to design and evaluate general scales for students' operational learning.
Methods: This was an instrumental study with combined (sequential exploratory) approach that conducted in 2021 in a sample of students of various fields of medical sciences. First, by qualitative data collection, content analyzing of the texts, the primary scales were formulated. Afterthat the pilot study, the reliability and validity evaluation of the tool and the formulation of the final version were developed. To determine the validity of the tool, face, content and construct validity and to determine reliability, Cronbach's alpha as well as split-half were used. The appropriateness of exploratory analysis to identify the structure was determined with KMO indices and Bartlett's test.
Results: First, 42 items were determined in the design of the questionnaire, and in the validity and reliability process, the number of items reached 38 items. The CVI and CVR indices were 79% and 62%, respectively. Factor analysis showed that 7 factors (problem solving ability, feeling of competence in the field, concern, social skills, awareness of the application of the field, responsibility and skill in the field) have an eigenvalue of more than 1, which explained 80.30% of the variance. The reliability of the tool was obtained with Cronbach's alpha of 0.976 and Gutman's coefficient value was also 0.945.
Conclusions: The findings showed the validity and reliability of the tool for measuring students' operational learning. Therefore, it can be used as a valid tool in universities of medical sciences.