Psychometric properties of the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) applied to medical residents

Abstract

The Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) is a measure of students' perceptions of the educational environment, but its performance in evaluating the educational environment in the residency setting has not yet been described. This study aimed at describing the psychometric performance of DREEM applied to medical residents. DREEM was applied to 97 residents from 12 training programs on four specialties in six institutions in three Brazilian cities. Psychometric measures included factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha coefficients, item-to-total correlations, t-test comparisons of scores between genders, institutions, specialties, and programs, correlations with the global score of the Quality of School Life Scale (concurrent validity), and test-retest reliability. Generalizability theory procedures were applied to a random subset of data. Programs (8) were the objects of measure, while institutions (6), specialties (4), raters-within-programs (40), and items-on-the-scale (50) were facets. Variance components, generalizability (G) and dependability (D) coefficients were calculated. Cronbach's alpha was 0.93. DREEM showed high discriminant and concurrent validities. Test-retest reliability was moderate. Interactions between programs, raters and items accounted for 68% of the total variance. G and D coefficients were 0.95 and 0.67, respectively. The instrument proved to be useful for relative comparisons at both resident and program level.

Perception of Educational Environment Among Undergraduate Students in a Chiropractic Training Institution

“…Overall reliability values generated in this study (0.91) were much higher than thresholds generally considered acceptable for scales (0.70) and also similar to published studies, 13,25,26,29,34,35 which indicates that the DREEM instrument can reliably be used in a context of chiropractic education. Two items (42 and 45) of the original scale were slightly modified from the original version of the DREEM to better translate and correspond with chiropractic education, which seemed to have no effect on its validity and reliability.…”

“…22,23 The Dundee Ready Education Environment (DREEM) inventory is a robust instrument, quantitatively measuring students´perception of the educational environment in relation to different domains, and has proven to have high content and construct validity. 24,25 It has shown consistently high reliability in a diversity of surroundings. 15,16,24,[26][27][28][29][30][31] Thus, the instrument is useful, versatile, and "culture free" and has been used in a range of settings.…”

Psychometric evaluation of the Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure: Swedish version

“…Despite this extensive research, very few psychometric studies have been published since the original development of the instrument (Roff et al 1997). Among those are a Portuguese version for use in training of residents (de Oliveira Filho et al 2005), a Chinese version for nursing (Wang et al 2009) and a Greek translation (Dimoliatis et al 2010) The DREEM instrument contains 50 items and a Likert scale is used giving a global maximum score of 200. Factor analysis has resulted in five subscales (Roff et al 1997).…”

Percepción de los estudiantes de medicina del ambiente educativo en una facultad con currículo tradicional (UCH-Chile) y otra con currículo basado en problemas (UNC-Argentina)

“…En general, como ya han indicado algunos autores [21][22][23], el cuestionario DREEM es una herramienta eficaz para diagnosticar áreas débiles en el currículo. Constituye una pieza importante para el seguimiento de la calidad de la enseñanza en las facultades de medicina y, como en este caso para la UCH, para el establecimiento de una línea base de implementación del nuevo currículo, proceso en el cual se encuentran inmersos.…”