Psychometric properties of the Medical Student Wellbeing Index at different interval of measurements in a cohort of medical students

Abstract

Background : One of important educational climate roles is to provide an environment that promotes positive development of medical students’ psychological wellbeing during training. Unfortunately, many studies have reported that educational climate in medical education are not favourable to them . Therefore, it is a real need for a simple, valid, reliable and stable tool that will help medical schools to screen psychological wellbeing of their students so that early intervention could be done. Objective : This study aimed to explore the psychometric properties of the Medical Student Wellbeing Index (MSWBI) to measure psychological wellbeing at different interval of measurements in a cohort of medical students. Methodology : A prospective study was done on a cohort of medical students. MSWBI was administered to the medical students at five different intervals. The confirmatory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and intra-class correlation analysis were applied to measure construct validity, internal consistency and agreement level at different interval of measurements. Result : A total of 153 (89.5%) medical students responded completely to the MSWBI. The MSWBI showed that the one-factor model had acceptable values for most of the goodness of fit indices signified its construct was stable across multiple measurements. The overall Cronbach’s alpha values for the MSWBI at the five measurements ranged between 0.69 and 0.78. The ICC coefficient values for the MSWBI total score was 0.58 to 0.59. Conclusion : This study found that the MSWBI had stable psychometric properties as a screening tool for measuring psychological wellbeing among medical students at different time and occasions. Continued research is required to refine and verify its psychometric credentials at different educational settings.