Development of the Undergraduate Version of the Interprofessional Learning Scale

The undergraduate version of the Interprofessional Learning Scale (UIPLS) was developed to evaluate students' competency in interprofessional education because the existing scales were too professional for entry-level students to understand and respond to effectively. In addition, existing scales have some noted problems with validity and reliability.

An early 49-item version of the UIPLS was completed by 837 first-year students from two universities and one technical college, including departments for various professionals, in Hokkaido prefecture, Japan. The most common age group was 18-19 years (89.4%) and 61.2% were women. Ten items from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were used to exclude respondents who tended to create a socially favorable impression and/or a possible random and incorrectly scored profile. Kikuchi's Social Skills Scale (18 items) was also used as an external standard to demonstrate the convergent validity of the UIPLS.

Eighteen items across four factors were extracted by factor analysis: "reflection on group work," "attitude towards group work," "knowledge of interprofessional working," and "skill in group work." Internal consistency was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (>0.75).

With good indicators of its validity and reliability, the UIPLS shows some promising aspects to evaluate students' competency for interprofessional working.