Assessment of educational environment using Dreem Scale: are different domains needed revisiting?

Abstract

Introduction: DREEM stands for Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure is an internationally accepted checklist for assessment of educational status in medical schools.

Objective: To find out the reliability of DREEM scale and its different domains like  Students' Perceptions of Learning (SPL), Students' Perceptions of Atmosphere (SPA), Students' Perceptions of Teachers (SPT), Students' Academic Self- Perceptions (SASP), and Students' Social Self-Perceptions (SSSP).

Methods: The study was conducted at IQ City Medical College, Durgapur, West Bengal from April–September, 2018 among 407 students with a response rate of 72.5%. Reliability analysis was evaluated by the Cronbach’s alpha, corrected item total correlation and Cronbach’s alpha if item deleted values by SPSS software.

Results: Overall DREEM scale had excellent reliability with Cronbach’s α value 0.905. Regarding different sub domains SPL, SPT and SPA had acceptable reliability with a score more than 0.7 and less than 0.8. SASP had questionable reliability with a value of 0.674 and SSSP had poor reliability with a score of 0.518. Apart from the DREEM questionnaires following are the suggestions from the students’ - more practical exposures, patient exposure, integrated teaching, more interactive sessions, seminars, workshops, quizzes, increased number of academic cases in the college, good canteen facilities, recreational environment for relaxation, good senior – junior interaction, more attention to mediocre & slow students, extra doubt clearing classes, correct way of writing answers to get good marks in examinations etc.

Conclusion: Although overall reliability of the scale was excellent but different domains was not found to be consistent as other studies, which needs revisiting.

Keywords: DREEM, educational environment, reliability, Cronbach’s α