Designing a Valid and Reliable Tool for Assessing Academic Educational Environment in Health Schools of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences

Educational environment is an important determinant in success of a curriculum. The quality of educational environment is one of the elements of effective learning. The aim of this study was designing a valid and reliable tool for assessing academic educational environment in schools of health. Using a theoretical sampling method, eight students and three faculty members of School of Health, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (Iran) were interviewed and 81 items related to educational environment were extracted. These items were classified in six domains including school atmosphere, teaching, faculty members, students, educational equipments and facilities, and physical environment. Expert panels and assessing item impact were used to determine face validity, and content validity ratio and index were used to determine content validity of the tool. To determine its construct validity, 250 students in completed the questionnaires and confirmatory factor analysis was applied. Reliability of the tool was determined by Cronbach’s Alpha and intracluster correlation coefficient. Due to expert panel and calculating item impact, and content validity ratio and index, the tool items decreased from 81 to 56. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that all of factor loadings were significant in level of 0.05. Cronbach’s Alpha for total items was 0.94 and for six domains ranged from 0.65 to 0.85. Moreover, intracluster correlation coefficient for total items was 0.94. The designed tool has good validity and reliability and can be used as a suitable tool for assessing academic educational environment in schools of health.