Reliability and Validity of Disability Literacy Scale for Medical School Students

Abstract Background Disability literacy is the ability to perceive definition of disabled person, their characteristics, difficulties in daily life and solution suggestions, their rights and false thoughts and orientations about them. The aim of the study was to develop the Disability Literacy Scale (DLS) to determine the disability literacy of medical school students with a high probability of encountering disabled people. Methods This study was conducted in 1110 medical school students in 2018-2019 academic year. By using literature 97 questions were collected. DLS was created with 22 questions by taking expert opinions. Correct answer was scored as 1, while wrong or ’do not know’ answer as 0. In order to evaluate the reliability of the scale, item total score correlation and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) analyzes and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used for construct validity. Results Of the 51.1% students were female and their age ranged from 17-40, the mean was 21.1±2.2. After the scale development study, the scale consisted of 14 items and 3 sub-dimensions. Scale items explain 43.21% of total variance and factor loadings ranged from 0.37-0.80. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.61, 0.64, 0.51 for communication, health problems and social life sub-dimensions, and 0.68 for the whole scale. The fit of scale and the fit index were found to be acceptable after confirmatory factor analysis. In the last form of the scale, the score that can be taken from scale range 0-14. It was accepted that by increasing of the score, disability literacy level was increased. The mean score of students was 9.79±2.57 and the median was 10.0. The scores obtained from DLS were found to be lower in the first 3 grades (p < 0.001), low level mother and father education (p < 0.001/p=0.012) and who have not yet taken lesson about disability (p = 0.021). Conclusions DLS is a valid-reliable tool for assessing disability literacy levels of medical school students. Key messages It is essential to place disability related lessons from the earliest grades of medical school curriculum. In the literature, DLS seems the first scale about disability literacy and needs to be tested in large communities.