Measuring Attitudes: Current Practices in Health Professional Education

Attitudes are an enduring set of beliefs, perceptions, and ideas. Students enrolled in health professional courses may have strong beliefs and opinions on certain topics related to professional education and their clinical practice. These attitudes may become more apparent while health professional students are completing clinical placements. This chapter provides an overview of definitions of what attitudes are; why attitudes are important; how attitudes develop, change, and evolve; approaches to the measurement of and gathering attitude-related data; types of quantitative attitude scales; qualitative approaches to gathering attitude data; the steps involved in constructing an attitude measurement scale; and the relevance of attitudes to health professional clinical education. Academic and clinical educators need to be conversant on the topic of students’ attitudes and its relationship to clinical education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Primary and Allied Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University – Peninsula Campus, Frankston, VIC, Australia Ted Brown & Mong-Lin Yu
  2. Faculty of Health, The University of Canberra Hospital, Bruce, ACT, Australia Stephen Isbel & Thomas Bevitt
  1. Ted Brown