title: Can less be more? Comparison of an 8-item placement quality measure with the 50-item Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM).
abstract: Clinical clerks learn more than they are taught and not all they learn can be measured. As a result, curriculum leaders evaluate clinical educational environments. The quantitative Dundee Ready Environment Measure (DREEM) is a de facto standard for that purpose. Its 50 items and 5 subscales were developed by consensus. Reasoning that an instrument would perform best if it were underpinned by a clearly conceptualized link between environment and learning as well as psychometric evidence, we developed the mixed methods Manchester Clinical Placement Index (MCPI), eliminated redundant items, and published validity evidence for its 8 item and 2 subscale structure. Here, we set out to compare MCPI with DREEM. 104 students on full-time clinical placements completed both measures three times during a single academic year. There was good agreement and at least as good discrimination between placements with the smaller MCPI. Total MCPI scores and the mean score of its 5-item learning environment subscale allowed ten raters to distinguish between the quality of educational environments. Twenty raters were needed for the 3-item MCPI training subscale and the DREEM scale and its subscales. MCPI compares favourably with DREEM in that one-sixth the number of items perform at least as well psychometrically, it provides formative free text data, and it is founded on the widely shared assumption that communities of practice make good learning environments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Calgary, HSC G324B, 3330 Hospital Drive N.W., Calgary, AB, T2N 2N1, Canada. makelly@ucalgary.ca.
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
authors.forename: Deirdre
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bennett
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Development and Research, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Arno
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Muijtjens
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
authors.forename: Siun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: O'Flynn
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Development and Research, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.|Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dornan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002982:Clinical Clerkship; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods*; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007494:Ireland; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D012931:Social Environment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: DREEM; Learning environment; Manchester Clinical Placement Index