Psychometric properties of DREEM in a sample of Malaysian medical students

Full text

Page 1

XML Template (2012)
//Blrnas1/Journals/application/tandf/CMTE/CMTE_A_675104.3d
[28.3.2012–5:04pm][1–1]
(CMTE) [PREPRINTER stage]
2012; ??: 1
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Psychometric properties
of DREEM in a sample of
Malaysian medical students
Dear Sir
Over the past 15 years, medical and allied health educators
across the globe widely used the Dundee Ready Educational
Environment Measure (DREEM) to appraise their institutions’
educational climate (Roff & McAleer 2001). Its validity and
reliability was well reported across institutions, but none of the
article reported about it in Malaysia settings. This study aimed
to evaluate its psychometric properties in a sample of
Malaysian medical students. It was designed to answer a few
questions: (1) Is DREEM a valid and reliable tool to measure
educational climate in the studied population?, (2) What is the
best fit model of DREEM in the studied population? (3) Does
internal consistency vary across years of study?
The author carried out a cross-sectional study on 656
medical students. A total of 511 (77.9%) medical students
completely responded to the DREEM: 156 (30.5%) first year,
196 (38.4%) third year and 159 (31.1%) fifth year. Majority of
them were female (61.1%). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
and reliability analysis were analysed by SPSS version 18 and
AMOS 19 to assess the construct validity and internal
consistency.
The CFA showed that the proposed five-factor structure of
the original DREEM was not fit as all the goodness of fit indices
did not signify for model fit. This finding consistent with
previous studies reported that its construct validity was not
well supported by the empirical data (Jakobsson et al. 2011).
On further CFA, the author found that the five-factor structure
of DREEM with 17 items (i.e. the shortened DREEM) was fit as
all the indices signify for model fit. Cronbach’s alpha values
across years of study for the subscales of both DREEM versions
ranged between 0.53 and 0.82.
Our study did not support the proposed five-factor
structure of DREEM. The shortened version demonstrated a
better fit with the proposed model and was found to be as
reliable as the original version across years of study. Continued
research is required to verify and maximize psychometric
credentials of the DREEM across institutions and nationalities.
Muhamad Saiful Bahri Yusoff, Medical Education Department,
School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 16150
Kota Bahru, Kelantan, Malaysia. E-mail: msaiful@kb.usm.my
References
Jakobsson U, Danielsen N, Edgren G. 2011. Psychometric evaluation of the
Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure: Swedish version.
Medical Teach 33(5):267–274.
Roff S, McAleer S. 2001. What is educational climate? Med Teach 23(4):333.
ISSN 0142–159X print/ISSN 1466–187X online/12/000001–1 ? 2012 Informa UK Ltd.
1
DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2012.675104
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124