Stability of DREEM in a Sample of Medical Students: A Prospective Study

Abstract

Background. Over the last 15 year, DREEM was applied in various educational settings to appraise educational climate. So far, none of article reported its stability in Malaysian medical students.Objective. To determine stability of the DREEM to measure educational climate at different time and occasions using a sample of medical students.Methodology. A prospective cohort study was done on 196 first year medical students. It was administered to the medical students at four different intervals. The Cronbach's alpha and intraclass correlation analysis were applied to measure internal consistency and agreement level across the intervals. The analysis was done using SPSS 18.Result. A total of 186 (94.9%) medical students responded completely to the DREEM inventory. The overall Cronbach's alpha value of the DREEM at the four measurements ranged between 0.91 and 0.94. The average Cronbach's alpha values of the five subscales ranged between 0.45 and 0.83. The ICC coefficient values for the DREEM total score was 0.67 and its subscales ranged between 0.51 and 0.62.Conclusion. This study supported satisfactory levels of stability and internal consistency of the DREEM to measure educational climate over multiple observations in a sample of Malaysian medical students. Continued research is required to optimise its psychometric credential across educational settings.