Developing a Measure of Students' Potential Involvement in Scholarly Activities

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Scholarly Activities Measurement

Background:

• Pharmacy schools need to foster a culture of inquiry for scholarly practice.
• Developing future pharmacists' scholarly engagement is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create and validate an instrument measuring intentions for scholarly activities among pharmacy students.
• The instrument aims to assess engagement in research, professional writing, and practice evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Developed items representing pharmacist scholarly activities.
• Utilized exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for item reduction and factor identification.
• Assessed internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha and compared scores across student demographics.

Main Results:

• The Potential Involvement in Scholarly Activities (PISA) instrument was finalized with 27 items across 3 domains: research, writing, and practice evaluation.
• The instrument demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ≥0.85).
• First-year students and those with prior research experience or postgraduate interests reported higher PISA scores.

Conclusions:

• The PISA instrument shows a reliable 3-factor structure and acceptable internal consistency in the studied sample.
• Further validation in diverse student populations is recommended.
• The PISA scale can aid in assessing and promoting scholarly intentions in pharmacy education.