Psychometric properties of the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure in Dentistry

Introduction: Assessment of the educational environment helps an institution evaluate whether the learning process is being effective in accordance with the objectives or needs to be improved. The Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure is one of the most frequent tools for assessing the educational environment. The present study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties (reliability and construct validity) of the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure. Materials and methods: Two hundred and seventy-six students were surveyed. The reliability assessment was performed through the internal consistency analysis; the item valuation was performed through Pearson's product-moment correlation analysis and the construct validity through exploratory factor analysis. Results: The 50 items showed good reliability with a Cronbach alpha value of 0.898; 2 subscales showed low values of reliability: social self-perception and academic self-perception with values of 0.362 and 0.687 respectively. Five items were eliminated (r < 0.3) and the remaining items did not support the 5-factor structure of the original instrument. Conclusion: The Spanish version used for the present study proved to be reliable but the construct validity was not evidenced according to the 5 original factors, so the psychometric properties of the questionnaire are considered to be variable according to the samples and study conditions.