title: A questionnaire to measure medical students' attitudes towards occupational medicine.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Occupational medicine is not well represented in medical curricula. Educational programmes should aim at raising the interest of medical students in occupational medicine.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To develop a questionnaire to measure the attitude of medical students towards occupational medicine.
  
  
  METHODS
  We drew up statements about attitudes. We used a 5-point Likert scale to elicit answers from second-year medical students. We analysed the questionnaires with exploratory factor analysis to find common scales. After item reduction, we used the questionnaire in third-year medical students from another medical faculty, before and after education.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Responses from 141 second-year and 208 third-year medical students were available. Analysis resulted in 18 statements in three scales: a career as an occupational physician, occupational medicine as an interesting speciality and role of the occupational physician. We measured modest changes following an occupational medicine programme. Further development of the questionnaire with qualitative research will lead to better usability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This questionnaire can be used to measure attitude towards occupational medicine; however, this questionnaire needs to be developed further.
authors.affiliation: Coronel Institute of Occupational Health, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, 1100 DE Amsterdam, The Netherlands, p.b.smits@amc.nl.
authors.forename: P B A
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Smits
authors.affiliation: Knowledge Transfer Team, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Kuopio 70701, Finland.
authors.forename: J H A M
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Verbeek
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D009787:Occupational Medicine / Q000193:education; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attitude; occupational medicine; program evaluation; questionnaire; undergraduate medical education.