Students' and teachers' views of a medical college environment in Saudi Arabia

The instrument used for the assessment of the environment of the College of Medicine at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia consisted of 22 contrasting adjective pairs, separated by a seven-point interval scale along the degree of positive and negative response. The data were collected both from students and teachers. A total of 100 teachers and 150 students were randomly selected. All the respondents were mailed the final instrument with complete sets of instructions and directions. In all, 69 teachers and 97 students returned the completed questionnaire. In order to analyse the data, in addition to analysis of variance, multivariate discriminant analysis was utilized to interpret the data in more than only statistical sense. The implications of these findings for developing intervention strategies to minimize the inadequacies in the academic environment and to influence the development of the students towards the attainment of institutional objectives are discussed.