Measuring the Inquiry Attitude

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Measuring What's Difficult to Measure: Investigations of Instruments Used in the Health Professions to Understand Important Latent Constructs

Abstract

Proposals for reform of medical education suggest inquiry training as an approach to tackle challenges of medical practice. Inquiry is an approach that combines methods and attitude to produce learning and/or creation of appropriate solutions to a problem or gap in knowledge. Inquiry attitude is an overall evaluation concerning the practice of inquiry methods that is based on beliefs, emotions, and actions; it is expressed as a negative to positive valence. The development of a positive inquiry attitude is critical since attitudes influence our perceptions and guide our behavior. We report the development of a measure of the inquiry attitude; this is important because attitudes are generally not measured directly as part of competency assessment.

Authors

• Gustavo Valbuena, University of California - Berkeley

• Bridget Colleen O'Brien, University of California - San Francisco

• Olle ten Cate, University Medical Center Utrecht

• Patricia S. O'Sullivan, University of California - San Francisco