title: Development and Validation of the Scan of Postgraduate Educational Environment Domains (SPEED): A Brief Instrument to Assess the Educational Environment in Postgraduate Medical Education.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Current instruments to evaluate the postgraduate medical educational environment lack theoretical frameworks and are relatively long, which may reduce response rates. We aimed to develop and validate a brief instrument that, based on a solid theoretical framework for educational environments, solicits resident feedback to screen the postgraduate medical educational environment quality.
  
  
  METHODS
  Stepwise, we developed a screening instrument, using existing instruments to assess educational environment quality and adopting a theoretical framework that defines three educational environment domains: content, atmosphere and organization. First, items from relevant existing instruments were collected and, after deleting duplicates and items not specifically addressing educational environment, grouped into the three domains. In a Delphi procedure, the item list was reduced to a set of items considered most important and comprehensively covering the three domains. These items were triangulated against the results of semi-structured interviews with 26 residents from three teaching hospitals to achieve face validity. This draft version of the Scan of Postgraduate Educational Environment Domains (SPEED) was administered to residents in a general and university hospital and further reduced and validated based on the data collected.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Two hundred twenty-three residents completed the 43-item draft SPEED. We used half of the dataset for item reduction, and the other half for validating the resulting SPEED (15 items, 5 per domain). Internal consistencies were high. Correlations between domain scores in the draft and brief versions of SPEED were high (>0.85) and highly significant (p<0.001). Domain score variance of the draft instrument was explained for ≥80% by the items representing the domains in the final SPEED.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The SPEED comprehensively covers the three educational environment domains defined in the theoretical framework. Because of its validity and brevity, the SPEED is promising as useful and easily applicable tool to regularly screen educational environment quality in postgraduate medical education.
authors.affiliation: Center for Educational Development and Research in health sciences, Institute for Medical Education, University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schönrock-Adema
authors.affiliation: UMCG Postgraduate School of Medicine, University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Maartje
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Visscher
authors.affiliation: Center for Educational Development and Research in health sciences, Institute for Medical Education, University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: A N Janet
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Raat
authors.affiliation: Center for Educational Development and Research in health sciences, Institute for Medical Education, University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; UMCG Postgraduate School of Medicine, University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; Princess Amalia Children's Centre, Isala Hospital, Zwolle, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Paul L P
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Brand
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004503:Education, Medical, Graduate / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male