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Published in: Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine 1/2018

Open Access 01-12-2018 | Research article

Development and psychometric testing of an abridged version of Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM)

Authors: Kathiresan Jeyashree, Hemant Deepak Shewade, Soundappan Kathirvel

Published in: Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine | Issue 1/2018

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Abstract

Background

Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) is a 50-item tool to assess the educational environment of medical institutions as perceived by the students. This cross-sectional study developed and validated an abridged version of the DREEM-50 with an aim to have a less resource-intensive (time, manpower), yet valid and reliable, version of DREEM-50 while also avoiding respondent fatigue.

Methods

A methodology similar to that used in the development of WHO-BREF was adopted to develop the abridged version of DREEM. Medical students (n = 418) from a private teaching hospital in Madurai, India, were divided into two groups. Group I (n = 277) participated in the development of the abridged version. This was performed by domain-wise selection of items that had the highest item-total correlation. Group II (n = 141) participated in the testing of the abridged version for construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to assess the construct validity of DREEM-12.

Results

The abridged version had 12 items (DREEM-12) spread over all five domains in DREEM-50. DREEM-12 explained 77.4% of the variance in DREEM-50 scores. Correlation between total scores of DREEM-50 and DREEM-12 was 0.88 (p < 0.001). Confirmatory factor analysis of DREEM-12 construct was statistically significant (LR test of model vs. saturated p = 0.0006). The internal consistency of DREEM-12 was 0.83. The test-retest reliability of DREEM-12 was 0.595, p < 0.001.

Conclusion

DREEM-12 is a valid and reliable tool for use in educational research. Future research using DREEM-12 will establish its validity and reliability across different settings.
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Metadata
Title
Development and psychometric testing of an abridged version of Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM)
Authors
Kathiresan Jeyashree
Hemant Deepak Shewade
Soundappan Kathirvel
Publication date
01-12-2018
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine / Issue 1/2018
Print ISSN: 1342-078X
Electronic ISSN: 1347-4715
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12199-018-0702-7

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