Psychometric Properties of the Persian Questionnaire for Evaluation of Clinical Teaching at Outpatient Settings

PURPOSE: To assess the validity and reliability of the Persian Outpatient Clinical Teaching Evaluation (OCTE) questionnaire, in order to evaluate clinical teaching for undergraduate medical students. METHODS: This was a methodological study conducted in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2018. To assess the validity of the questionnaire, ten academic staff who had received master’s degrees in medical education were chosen by convenience sampling. The first draft of the Persian questionnaire was derived from the Ministry of Health’s clinical teaching standards booklet. The questionnaire consisted of just 15 obligatory items in the first draft of the questionnaire. Subsequently, the questionnaire was modified to be used in teaching outpatient clinics. Content validity indices were calculated. Subsequently, the modified questionnaires were given to 92 academic staff in Imam-Reza Hospital’s outpatient clinics. We applied principle component analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation for exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In order to confirm the EFA, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used. Cronbach’s alpha method, the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and test–retest reliability were used to assess the reliability. RESULTS: The overall content validity ratio (CVR), content validity index (CVI), and impact score (IS) were 0.78, 0.79, and 3.26, respectively. Out of 92 academic staff, 85 participated. The Keizer-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy for data was 0.726 (p-value=0.0001). After the EFA, the 10-item questionnaire loaded on three factors. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was established by Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 and the ICC was 0.94. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation with a 2-week retest interval. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrated that the Persian clinical teaching questionnaire had optimal psychometric properties. Thus, application of this questionnaire at outpatient settings can be helpful.