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

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Distance Learning
• Educational Technology

Background:

• Higher education institutions, including medical faculties, rapidly adopted distance education tools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The shift to distance learning necessitated the development of effective tools and practices for medical education.
• Evaluating medical students' perceptions of distance education is crucial for optimizing learning experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a reliable scale for assessing medical students' perceptions of distance education.
• To provide a quantitative measure for understanding student experiences with remote learning in medical training.

Main Methods:

• A 57-item scale was initially developed and refined to 38 items based on expert content validity assessment.
• Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on data from 429 and 286 medical students, respectively.
• Reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients, and a five-point Likert scale was used for responses.

Main Results:

• Content validity analysis reduced the scale to 38 items.
• Exploratory factor analysis identified 22 items forming a four-factor structure among 429 medical students.
• Confirmatory factor analysis validated this four-factor model with 286 students, showing high reliability (Cronbach's alpha: 0.713–0.930).

Conclusions:

• A 22-item, four-factorial scale demonstrated reliability and validity for measuring medical students' perceptions of distance education.
• This validated scale can be used to evaluate and improve distance learning strategies in medical education.