Abstract
“Community-engaged” learning is recognized as an
important pedagogy in health professions education, yet
assessment of student attitudes related to its impact on
social responsibility as part of their professional formation
remains a challenge. The Higher Education Service Learning
Survey (HESLS) has been used in university settings to
gauge student perceptions of civic responsibility associated
with general volunteerism in communities. The HESLS was
not appropriate for health professions service, but questions
from the HESLS guided development of a scale to assess
physical therapy students’ perceptions of social
responsibility associated with participation in health-related
community service. Although preliminary data revealed
positive changes, the modified survey’s
methodological properties had not been established. The
purpose of this study was to explore reliability and criterion
validity for use of the modified scale with doctoral students
from the professions of Occupational Therapy (OT),
Pharmacy and Physical Therapy (PT).