Development and validation of a questionnaire to evaluate medical students’ and residents’ responsibility in clinical settings

There is a shortage of quantitative measures for assessing the concept of responsibility as a fundamental construct in medical education, ethics and professionalism in existing literature. This study aimed to develop an instrument for measuring responsibility in both undergraduate and graduate medical students during clinical training. Instrument content was based on literature review and mainly qualitative data obtained from a published grounded theory research. The draft questionnaire (Persian version) was then validated and revised with regard to face and content validity. The finalized 41-item questionnaire consists of four domains that were identified using factor analysis. Test-retest reliability and internal consistency were also assessed. Test-retest reliability was rather high, ranging between 0.70 and 0.75 for all domains. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.75 – 0.76 for all domains and 0.90 for the composite scale of the whole questionnaire. Correlations between the four domains of the instrument were also satisfactory (r ≤ 0.47 for most domains). The correlation between each domain and the composite scale was higher than its correlation with other domains (r ≥ 0.79 for most domains). The instrument demonstrated good construct and internal validity, and can be suitable for measuring the concept of responsibility in practice in different groups of undergraduate and graduate medical trainees (MTs).