The Questionnaire "SFDP26-German": a reliable tool for evaluation of clinical teaching?

Aims: Evaluation of the effectiveness of clinical teaching is an important contribution for the quality control of medical teaching. This should be evaluated using a reliable instrument in order to be able to both gauge the status quo and the effects of instruction. In the Stanford Faculty Development Program (SFDP), seven categories have proven to be appropriate: 1. Establishing the Learning Climate, . 2. Controlling a Teaching Session, . 3. Communication of Goals, . 4. Encouraging Understanding and Retention, . 5. Evaluation, . 6. Feedback and 7. Self-directed Learning. . Since 1998, the SFDP26 questionnaire has established itself as an evaluation tool in English speaking countries. To date there is no equivalent German-language questionnaire available which evaluates the overall effectiveness of teaching. Question: 1. Development and theoretical testing of a German-language version of SFDP26 (SFDP26-German), 2. Check the correlation of subscale of SFDPGerman against overall effectiveness of teaching. Methods: 19 anaesthetists (7 female, 12 male) from the University of Lübeck were evaluated at the end of a teaching seminar on emergency medical care using SFDP-German. The sample consisted of 173 medical students (119 female (68.8%) and 54 male (31.2%), mostly from the fifth semester (6.6%) and sixth semester (80.3%). The mean age of the students was 23±3 years. Results: The discriminatory power of all items ranged between good and excellent (r(it)=0.48-0.75). All subscales displayed good internal consistency (α=0.69-0.92) and significant positive inter-scale correlations (r=0.40-0.70). The subscales and “overall effectiveness of teaching” showed significant correlation, with the highest correlation for the subscale “communication of goals (p< 0.001; r = 0.61). Conclusion: The analysis of SFDP26-German confirms high internal consistency. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of the individual categories on the overall effectiveness of teaching and validate according to external criteria.