Development and testing of an instrument to assess behavioral professionalism of pharmacy students

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to develop and test an instrument to assess pharmacy students ’ behav-ioral aspects of professionalism. An instrument was constructed to represent seven dimensions of behav-ioral professionalism. The instrument was reviewed by 90 experiential coordinators and preceptors from 49 pharmacy schools. The instrument was then revised to 37 items. It was piloted with Purdue pharma-cy students and preceptors during Spring 1998. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in reduction to 25 items representing four factors: responsibility, interpersonal/social skills, communication skills, and appearance. A revised instrument was administered to 994 student/preceptor pairs from 17 pharmacy schools in Summer 1998. Factor analysis confirmed the original factors. The resulting reliability estimates were 0.95, 0.95, 0.88, and 0.83, respectively. The instrument appears to have content validity as assessed by experts, reliability and a factor structure as indicated by two analyses. Further refinement and testing could lead to a comprehensive measure of professionalism with potential use throughout phar-macy curricula, and within other disciplines and professions.