Development of an indigenous questionnaire to assess the moral sensitivity of Iranian medical students

This study aims to develop a national questionnaire that measures the moral sensitivity of Iranian medical students. The questions were developed based on ethical vignettes in educational documents، the professional code of conduct in Tehran University of Medical Sciences and medical students’ workbooks in ethics course. A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the clarity and appropriateness of 7 primary questions. Next، 38 questions were reviewed for content and face validity by an expert panel including 7 expert teachers and 4 lay experts (medical students). In order to assess the reliability of the finalized 35 questions، a test-retest was conducted on 30 medical students with a 2 weeks interval. Through test-retest study، the median values of intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)، Spearman and Kappa were calculated at 0. 81، 0. 65 and 0. 53 respectively. The final version of this instrument consists of 24 scenarios، each presenting an ethical challenge، and has a Cronbach’s alpha reliability score of 0. 67. The final questionnaire could be used as a valid and reliable research instrument to determine the moral sensitivity level of Iranian medical students. Another application for this instrument may be evaluation of the effectiveness of curricular reforms by longitudinal studies. To the best of our knowledge، this is the first context-specific instrument on moral sensitivity assessment in Iranian medical schools.