What are the key elements of a positive learning environment? Perspectives from students and faculty.

The learning environment comprises the psychological, social, cultural and physical setting in which learning occurs and has an influence on student motivation and success. The purpose of the present study was to explore qualitatively, from the perspectives of both students and faculty, the key elements of the learning environment that supported and hindered student learning. We recruited a total of 22 students and 9 faculty to participate in either a focus group or an individual interview session about their perceptions of the learning environment at their university.

Factor Structure Analysis of Pharmacy Students' Performance on the Health Education Learning Environment Survey.

While high-quality learning environments are increasingly recognized as vital for health professions education programs and student success, no tools to assess such environments have been validated for use within the pharmacy education context. This study seeks to assess whether the six-factor structure of the Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES) will replicate in a sample of pharmacy students. The study was conducted in a Doctor of Pharmacy program offered at a Western Canadian university.

Exploring student perceptions of the learning environment in four health professions education programs.

The desire to support student learning and professional development, in combination with accreditation requirements, necessitates the need to evaluate the learning environment of educational programs. The Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES) is a recently-developed global measure of the learning environment for health professions programs. This paper provides evidence of the applicability of the HELES for evaluating the learning environment across four health professions programs: medicine, nursing, occupational therapy and pharmaceutical sciences.

Evaluating the Quality of Health Professions Learning Environments: Development and Validation of the Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES).

The learning environment can be broadly conceptualized as the physical, social, and psychological context in which learning and socialization takes place. While there is now an expectation that health professions education programs should monitor the quality of their learning environment, existing measures have been criticized for lacking a theoretical foundation and sufficient validity evidence. Guided by Moos's learning environment framework, this study developed and preliminarily validated a global measure of the learning environment.

Using the Readiness for Clerkship and Residency Surveys to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Four MD Programs: A Cross-Institutional Generalizability Study.

Purpose: The importance of confidence for learning and performance makes learners' perceptions of readiness for the next level of training valuable indicators of curricular success. The "Readiness for Clerkship" (RfC) and "Readiness for Residency" (RfR) surveys have been shown to provide reliable ratings of the relative effectiveness of various aspects of training. This study examines the generalizability of those results.

Readiness for Residency: A Survey to Evaluate Undergraduate Medical Education Programs.

Background: Health professions programs continue to search for meaningful and efficient ways to evaluate the quality of education they provide and support ongoing program improvement. Despite flaws inherent in self-assessment, recent research suggests that aggregated self-assessments reliably rank aspects of competence attained during preclerkship MD training. Given the novelty of those observations, the purpose of this study was to test their generalizability by evaluating an MD program as a whole.

Defining equivalence in medical education evaluation and research: does a distribution-based approach work?

Educators often seek to demonstrate the equivalence of groups, such as whether or not students achieve comparable success regardless of the site at which they trained. A methodological consideration that is often underappreciated is how to operationalize equivalence. This study examined whether a distribution-based approach, based on effect size, can identify an appropriate equivalence threshold for medical education data.

The readiness for clerkship survey: can self-assessment data be used to evaluate program effectiveness?

Purpose: To examine whether or not aggregated self-assessment data of clerkship readiness can provide meaningful sources of information to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program.

Method: The 39-item Readiness for Clerkship survey was developed during academic year 2009-2010 using several key competence documents and expert review. The survey was completed by two cohorts of students (179 from the class of 2011 in February 2010, 171 from the class of 2012 in November 2010) and of clinical preceptors (384 for class of 2011 preceptors, 419 for class of 2012 preceptors).

Invariance test of the Multidimensional Body Self-Relations Questionnaire: do women with breast cancer interpret this measure differently?

Purpose: To examine whether the meaning and interpretation of body image are similar for breast cancer survivors and women without breast cancer.

Method: Women completed the Multidimensional Body Self-Relations Questionnaire--Appearance Scales as part of two studies. There were 469 women with breast cancer and 385 women without breast cancer.

Measurement invariance of the appearance schemas inventory-revised and the body image quality of life inventory across age and gender.

The majority of body image measures have largely been developed with younger female samples. Before these measures can be applied to men, and to middle-aged and older women, and used to make gender and age comparisons, they must exhibit adequate cross-group measurement invariance. This study examined the age and gender cross-group measurement invariance of the Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised (ASI-R) and the Body Image Quality of Life Inventory (BIQLI), with a sample of 1,262 adults (422 men and 840 women) aged 18 to 98 years.