title: Spanish adaptation of The Penn State College of Medicine Scale to assess professionalism in medical students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Professionalism is a subject of interest in medical schools around the world. The use of a questionnaire could be useful to assess professionalism in Colombia.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To adapt The Penn State University College of Medicine Professionalism Questionnaire as a culturally valid instrument in the Spanish language.
  
  
  METHODS
  We followed recommendations from the IQOLA project and used forward and back translation with four independent translations, as well as a pilot evaluation and an evaluation of psychometric features with 250 students. We evaluated item-scale correlations and internal consistency with Chronbach's alpha test and conducted a principal components factor analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Global Cronbach's alpha was 0.86, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.83, and Bartlett's test of sphericity had a p >0.00001. We found six factors that explained 93% of the total variance and four new factors emerged in the factor analysis, while eight items had high uniqueness.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The Penn State University College of Medicine Scale measures professionalism attitudes in medical students with good reliability. However, the structure of the scale demonstrated differences when used in the Latin American medical student population.
authors: Departamento de Cirugía, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de La Sabana, Chía, Colombia.
authors: Eliseo
authors: E
authors: Bustamante
authors: Departamento de Cirugía, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de La Sabana, Chía, Colombia.
authors: Álvaro
authors: Á
authors: Sanabria
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003105:Colombia; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014177:Translations; D055815:Young Adult