Development of a Scale to Measure Attitudes Toward Professional Values: An Analysis of Dimensionality Using Rasch Measurement

The purpose of this study was to create and validate a scale of attitudes towards professional values. It corresponds to the phase of analysis of metric properties in an intentional sample of 1008 bachelor student's equivalent to 30.74% of the population of the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. The sample of students represents six knowledge areas: Social and Business Sciences, Human and Education Sciences, Natural Sciences, Exact Sciences, Technology and Engineering, and Health Sciences. The scale was pilot tested with a group of 253 students that took the full 50-item scale. Based on the Rasch Methodology, twenty items were deleted from the original scale. From the final scale, the outcomes reported unidimensionality and goodness-of fit indexes assuming the Rating Scale Model (RSM). The results showed values close to 1 on both goodness fit indexes: INFIT MNSQ and OUTFIT MSNQ. Finally, the reliability for the total scale was found to be .85 Cronbach's alpha. The six subscales within the scale (responsibility, honesty, justice, respect, autonomy and professional competence) had moderate levels of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha ranging .62 to .75). The findings have important implications for the accumulation of evidence of reliability and construct validity of an instrument for college students in the Mexican context.