Development of a battery of tests to measure attitudes and intended behaviours of dental students towards people with disability or those in marginalised groups.

INTRODUCTION: Recommended curricula in Special Care Dentistry (SCD) outline learning objectives that include the domain of attitudes and behaviours, but these are notoriously difficult to measure. The aims of this study were (i) to develop a test battery comprising adapted and new scales to evaluate values, attitudes and intentions of dental students towards people with disability and people in marginalised groups and (ii) to determine reliability (interitem consistency) and validity of the scales within the test battery.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A literature search identified pre-existing measures and models for the assessment of attitudes in healthcare students. Adaptation of three pre-existing scales was undertaken, and a new scale was developed based upon the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) using an elicitation survey. These scales underwent a process of content validation. The three adapted scales and the TPB scale were piloted by 130 students at 5 different professional stages, from 4 different countries.

RESULTS: The scales were adjusted to ensure good internal reliability, variance, distribution, and face and content validity. In addition, the different scales showed good divergent validity.

DISCUSSION: These results are positive, and the scales now need to be validated in the field.

CONCLUSIONS: It is hoped that these tools will be useful to educators in SCD to evaluate the impact of teaching and clinical exposure on their students.