Health science students’ attitude towards research training programs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Reliability and validity of the questionnaire instrument

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper was to determine the validity and reliability of a questionnaire tool for measuring students' attitudes toward components relevant to research training programs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The paper reports the responses of 564 Saudi Arabian students from seven government universities to the questionnaire comprising 16 items on 3 conceptual subscales, which measured students' attitude to research activities in the college; students' opinion of faculty involvement in research; and infrastructural facilities in the college. The results of this study provide the final scale, with all the 16 items of the initial Likert scale, for which strong evidence was obtained. RESULTS: Results indicated that the students' attitude toward the research (SAR) scale had three latent factors, which explained 62% of the variance: The three subscales measured includes: (i) Research activities offered in the college, (ii) students' opinion of faculty involvement in research, and (iii) infrastructural facilities offered in the college for research. The full scale including three subscales had good internal consistency (r(s) = 0.72 and α = 0.77 for full scale; and α between 0.71 and 0.79 for three subscales). CONCLUSION: This study provides evidence of reliability and validity of the SAR scale for the measurement of students' attitudes toward research training programs in Saudi Arabian Universities. The research findings will provide the basis for further research on health science students.