Measuring Social Accountability of Medical Universities’ Education Function- Design, Development, and Validation of Instrument

Abstract

BACKGROUND According to World Health Organization (WHO) emphasis, medical universities should adapt education, research, and service activities to prioritise health needs and challenges of society. To meet education, research, and service responsibilities to society, medical universities should subject themselves to measurement and assessment. Design, development and validation of a measurement instrument for Iranian Medical Schools' social accountability education function is the aim of study. This instrument is designed and developed to measure quality of education related activities within the accreditation of Iranian medical universities. METHODS This is a psychometric study, to develop the first draft of systematized instrument. Comprehensive literature review of resources, university sites, pre-existing scales, and valid universal metrics were used to extract initial items (questions) and to provide the theoretical support for the initial item pool. The theoretical analysis of the first draft would be done by assessing the face and content validity of the new instrument during the two rounds of Delphi technique for instrument validation. RESULTS Eighty-two items included nine dimensions and were developed and validated after two rounds using the Delphi method. Nine dimensions include: Anticipation of Society's Health Needs on the mission and goals of the program (6 items), planning and managing university activities (12 items), educational research (6 items), curriculum planning and educational programs (27 items), faculty members / staff (5 items), participation in health services (9 items), graduates (7 items), accreditation (7 items), admission of entries (3 items). The overall content validity index of the instrument based on the content experts that makes consensus, S-CVI of relevancy was equal to 0.93. CONCLUSIONS Present paper demonstrates new instrument for education function quality judgment of medical universities. To foster the accreditation standards and norms that reflect social accountability is an urgent need. Therefore, educational institutions and universities should be measured and rewarded based on their real status to meet the important health care needs of society.

The implementation of social accountability in medical schools in Eastern Mediterranean region: A scoping review

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The viewpoints of medical sciences wealth creators regarding the wealth creation strategies and path in medical sciences universities

“…Medical sciences universities should adapt their various activities, education, research, and service, to prioritize the health needs and challenges of societies and be accountable to them. [ 17 18 ]…”

Development and validation of inventory tool to evaluate social accountability principles in case scenarios used in problem-based curriculum (Social accountability inventory for PBL)

“…The development of this inventory was intended to meet the need to include SA in medical programme curricula that requires the employment of different educational strategies. PBL is essential for the application of SA and is a vehicle for education, highlighting various aspects of the social determinants of health and health system studies and improving self-directed learning [ 15 , 23 ]. There is a growing global trend of integrating SA into medical curricula to sensitise learners towards the health disparities, needs, and priorities of the societies they intend to serve.…”

“…Models and frameworks for assessing SA within entire medical schools were published internationally, including the social accountability grid published by the WHO, the CPU model invented by Boelen and Wollard, and the Training for Health Equity Network (THEnet) framework. Individual countries also published their frameworks for SA [9,[15][16][17][18]. Despite mentioning the above models and frameworks, the literature lacks a feasible and reliable instrument for measuring the implementation of SA in educational content [19].…”