Assessing the Psychometric Properties of a Reflective Practice Questionnaire Among Medical Sciences Students at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences

Assessing reflective performance in medical students is a crucial initial step in devising effective educational strategies for its enhancement. Current reflection scales in Iran fall short, primarily because they do not adequately address students’ willingness and inclination to engage in reflective practices. This study aimed to test psychometric properties of Reflective Performance Questionnaire (RPQ) among medical sciences students in Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences students (n=245). The RPQ underwent translation from English to Persian through a translation and back-translation process. The psychometric properties of the RPQ were done by using face, content, and construct validity, and reliability. The construct validity was done using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on 245 students. The reliability of the RPQ was also checked with two approaches of internal consistency and stability.

The content validity indices, namely Content Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR), were deemed satisfactory with values of 0.93 and 0.74, respectively. The EFA revealed a single factor containing 40 items explained more than 33% of the total observed variance. The reliability test revealed that the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (equal to 0.89) and the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) indicated satisfactory internal consistency equal to 0.89 (95%CI=0.87–0.91) for the tool.

This study confirmed that the Persian version of the “Reflective performance Scale” is a reliable and valid instrument to evaluate reflective performance in medical students within Iran. The structure of the dimensions obtained in this study was consistent with the structure of the original scale.