Purpose: The undergraduate version of the Interprofessional Learning Scale (UIPLS) was developed to evaluate students' competency in interprofessional education because the existing scales were too professional for entry-level students to understand and respond to effectively. In addition, existing scales have some noted problems with validity and reliability.
Methods: An early 49-item version of the UIPLS was completed by 837 first-year students from two universities and one technical college, including departments for various professionals, in Hokkaido prefecture, Japan. The most common age group was 18-19 years (89.4%) and 61.2% were women. Ten items from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were used to exclude respondents who tended to create a socially favorable impression and/or a possible random and incorrectly scored profile. Kikuchi's Social Skills Scale (18 items) was also used as an external standard to demonstrate the convergent validity of the UIPLS.
Results: Eighteen items across four factors were extracted by factor analysis: "reflection on group work," "attitude towards group work," "knowledge of interprofessional working," and "skill in group work." Internal consistency was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient (>0.75).
Conclusions: With good indicators of its validity and reliability, the UIPLS shows some promising aspects to evaluate students' competency for interprofessional working.