Abstract
BackgroundCultural awareness and cultural competence have become important skills in higher education as populations continue to grow in diversity around the world. However, currently, there are few instruments designed to assess student awareness of the aspects of culture, and the existing instruments need further development and testing for use with different target populations. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties of a modified version of the Cultural Awareness Scale (CAS) for use in higher education within the health and social care fields.MethodsA modified version of the CAS was developed, which was tested psychometrically using cross-sectional data. In total, 191 undergraduate students from different health and social care undergraduate programs in Sweden and Hong Kong responded to a call to test the modified instrument.ResultsThe results showed that the modified CAS is a four-factor measure of cultural awareness and possesses satisfactory internal consistency. Results also support the use of the modified CAS as a generic tool to measure cultural awareness among students in higher education within the health and social care fields.ConclusionThe modified CAS showed satisfactory psychometric properties and can be recommended as a generic tool to measure cultural awareness among students in higher education within the health and social care fields. However, further psychometric testing on the effectiveness of the modified CAS as a tool to evaluate the efficacy of cultural awareness interventions is required.
Highlights
Cultural awareness and cultural competence have become important skills in higher education as populations continue to grow in diversity around the world
Fourteen students thought that item 13 (“I have noticed that the instructors/supervisors at this university call on students from minority cultural groups when issues related to their group come up in class”) did not apply
The factor analysis was performed on data from 170 students who had completed the modified version of the CAS (mCAS) and answered all items
Summary
Cultural awareness and cultural competence have become important skills in higher education as populations continue to grow in diversity around the world. There are few instruments designed to assess student awareness of the aspects of culture, and the existing instruments need further development and testing for use with different target populations. The aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties of a modified version of the Cultural Awareness Scale (CAS) for use in higher education within the health and social care fields. Cultural awareness and cultural competence have become important skills in higher education within the health and social care fields as populations grow in diversity around the world as a result of increased migration. Existing instruments may need to be further developed and tested to fit different target populations
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