Distance education perception scale for medical students: a validity and reliability study

BACKGROUND: There are major changes in education strategies as higher education institutions urgently need to adopt distance education tools and practices due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Medical education is also trying to get out of this emergency using distance education. In this study, we aimed to develop a reliable and valid scale in order to evaluate the perceptions of medical students towards distance education. METHODS: The students taking part in the study were in the first five academic years of the medical faculty in Bursa in Turkey. At first, 57 items were determined to evaluate students’ perceptions. Content validity was examined according to the assessment of the expert team. Construct validity of these items was examined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Also, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated for reliability analysis. The medical students’ responses were scored using a five-point Likert scale. RESULTS: When the content validity was examined, the number of items was determined to be 38 items. Construct validity of these items was examined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Because of the exploratory factor analysis performed on the responses of 429 medical students, 22 items were included in four factors. This four-factor model was applied to 286 medical students and validated by confirmatory factor analysis. Also, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated for reliability analysis and values were between 0.713 and 0.930. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated validation and reliability of perceptions of distance education for medical students. We suggest a 22-item model with a four-factorial scale.