Perceptions of intercultural competence and institutional intercultural inclusiveness among first year medical students: a 4-year study

Malau-Aduli, Bunmi S., Ross, Simone, and Adu, Mary D. (2019) Perceptions of intercultural competence and institutional intercultural inclusiveness among first year medical students: a 4-year study. BMC Medical Education, 19. 346.

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Abstract

Background: This study sought to examine the awareness/perception of intercultural competence and institutional intercultural inclusiveness among first year students at an Australian medical school over four consecutive years (2014–2017); to identify existing gaps in the curriculum and proffer recommendations.

Methods: The study employed an adapted 20-item questionnaire for data collection. The reliability and interrelations of the survey items were examined. Descriptive statistics was used to examine students' perceptions, while Mann-U Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to assess items scores in relation to participant characteristics.

Results: Over the 4 years of study, there were 520 respondents with between 53 to 69% response rates per year. Cronbach's alpha for the instrument was 0.88 and factor analysis showed all items loading strongly on two components. Participants' mean score on self-reported intercultural competence levels ranged from 3.8–4.6 out of 5; indicating relatively high awareness, valuing and understanding of cultural differences among this group of students. However, their mean scores (3.4–4.2) for institutional intercultural inclusiveness were slightly lower.

Conclusion: The instrument used in this study is effective in assessing level of intercultural competence among medical students. However, the results highlight the need for increased institutional support and professional development for faculty members to foster institutional intercultural inclusiveness.

Item ID: 60393
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1472-6920
Keywords: Medical students, Intercultural competence, Institutional intercultural inclusiveness
Copyright Information: © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Date Deposited: 10 Oct 2019 02:18
FoR Codes: 39 EDUCATION > 3904 Specialist studies in education > 390407 Inclusive education @ 100%
SEO Codes: 93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9301 Learner and Learning > 930102 Learner and Learning Processes @ 10%
93 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 9301 Learner and Learning > 930103 Learner Development @ 10%
92 HEALTH > 9299 Other Health > 929999 Health not elsewhere classified @ 80%
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