Validity of communication skills attitude scale among Malaysian medical students

Abstract

The Communication skills Attitudes Scale (CSAS) developed by Ress, et al. (2002) has been a widely used instrument for measuring communication skills. With the view to check the validity and reliability of CSAS, a pilot study was carried out to assess the attitudes of undergraduate medical students of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) towards communication skills for teaching-learning and its determinants. Thirty five undergraduate USM students were selected from the 1st, 3rd and 5th years by 3 steps stratified random sampling. Data were collected from the students by a self-administered questionnaire. Factor analysis was conducted to assess construct validity and Cronbach's alphas were calculated to evaluate internal consistency. Principal component analysis (PCA) of the scores from 26 items in the instrument showed 8 factors. Three items were less than 0.4 on any of the two factors in the two factor model. Factor 1 comprised of 15 items including 11 positive items that were positive and 4 negative items (>0.4) with a overall weak load (<0.4) on factor 2 While, factor 2 had 8 items including 7 negative items that were positive and 1 positive item that was negative (>0.4) with an overall weak load (<0.4) on factor 1. The internal consistency of positive attitudes scale (PAS) and negative attitudes scale (NAS) were α = 0.875 and α = 0.748 respectively. The CSAS was found to be valid and reliable to measure the positive and negative attitudes of the USM undergraduate medical