Developing a Korean communication skills attitude scale: comparing attitudes between Korea and the West.
OBJECTIVE
We aimed to develop a Korean version of the Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) created by Rees et al. in order to elucidate the positive and negative aspects of Korean pre-medical and medical students' attitudes towards communication skills (CS) learning.


METHODS
We performed two surveys. In the first of these, 325 pre-medical and medical students completed a translated version of the CSAS. In the second survey, 257 medical students and doctors-in-training answered five open-ended questions to obtain more qualitative data about their attitudes. Results Principal component analysis with direct oblimin rotation performed with the data from the first survey produced the following five factors: facilitation of interpersonal skills; doubts about the importance of CS learning in medicine; motivation; negative attitudes towards assessment, and overconfidence.


RESULTS
from the second survey indicated that facilitation and importance within a medical context were two core attitudinal factors and suggested some modification to the CSAS to improve its fit for Korean pre-medical and medical students.


CONCLUSIONS
Using a Korean version of the CSAS (CSAS-K), we determined five factors that revealed a somewhat complex attitude structure among students towards CS learning. The CSAS required some modification, possibly because CS teaching and learning in Korea are in the development stage. Finally, the educational implications of the results are discussed.
Ahn
Sowon
S
Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.
Yi
Yeong-Houn
YH
Ahn
Duck-Sun
DS
D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003142:Communication; D003625:Data Collection; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D004516:Education, Premedical / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult