Reliability and Validity Evidence for an Academic Gender Equity Questionnaire.

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Education
• Social Sciences in Health

Background:

• The majority of pharmacy students and practicing pharmacists are women.
• Existing instruments to assess gender equity perceptions in pharmacy academia are lacking.
• This study addresses the need for a reliable and valid measurement tool.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct a psychometric analysis of a gender equity questionnaire developed by a Gender Equity Task Force.
• To provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the questionnaire.
• To establish a tool for assessing gender equity in academic pharmacy.

Main Methods:

• A 21-item questionnaire was developed, covering teaching, research, service, advancement, mentoring, recruitment, and leadership gender.
• The survey was distributed to members of the social and administrative science sections of two professional associations.
• Rasch analysis was employed to evaluate the questionnaire's psychometric properties.

Main Results:

• All items demonstrated unidimensionality after reverse coding.
• Merging adjacent categories to a 3-point scale resulted in appropriate scale functionality.
• The modified instrument and scale demonstrated interval-level data properties, with items ordered hierarchically by difficulty.

Conclusions:

• The gender equity questionnaire, with recommended edits (e.g., 3-point scale), provides reliability and validity evidence for use in academic pharmacy.
• This psychometrically sound instrument can enhance future data collection for gender equity research.
• The study supports the use of this validated questionnaire in the social and administrative academic pharmacy population.