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

Objective: 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; hidden curriculum; medical education.