The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM): a review of its adoption and use

The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM) was published in 1997 as a tool to evaluate educational environments of medical schools and other health training settings and a recent review concluded that it was the most suitable such instrument.

This study aimed to review the settings and purposes to which the DREEM has been applied and the approaches used to analyse and report it, with a view to guiding future users towards appropriate methodology.

A systematic literature review was conducted using the Web of Knowledge databases of all articles reporting DREEM data between 1997 and 4 January 2011.

The review found 40 publications, using data from 20 countries. DREEM is used in evaluation for diagnostic purposes, comparison between different groups and comparison with ideal/expected scores. A variety of non-parametric and parametric statistical methods have been applied, but their use is inconsistent.

DREEM has been used internationally for different purposes and is regarded as a useful tool by users. However, reporting and analysis differs between publications. This lack of uniformity makes comparison between institutions difficult. Most users of DREEM are not statisticians and there is a need for informed guidelines on its reporting and statistical analysis.