Gender awareness in medicine: adaptation and validation of the Nijmegen Gender Awareness in Medicine Scale to the Portuguese population (N-GAMS)

AbstractHealth care professionals ’ gender awareness has been presented as a mechanism to minimize gender biases in health. The present paper aimed to adapt and validate theNijmegen Gender Awareness in Medicine Scale (N-GAMS, Verdonk et al. in Sex Roles 58:222 –234, 2008.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9326-x) to the Portuguese population, also addressing some limitations of its original study, namely by: (1) testing the scale ’s three-fold underlying structure and (2) extending the study of its criteria-related validity, by analyzing sex-related differences in medical students’ gender awareness and the associations between gender awareness and empathy and sexism. One thousand and forty-eight medical students (Mage = 22.90; 67.1% women) filled out the Portuguese version of the N-GAMS (N-GAMS.pt) along with measures of Physician Empathy and Sexism. A Parallel Analysis and an Exploratory Factor Analysis suggested the presence of three factors. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed a good fit of the hypothes ized three-factor structure: (1)gender sensitivity (n  = 6 items; α = .713), (2)gender-role ideologies towards patients (n  = 7 items; α = .858) and (3)gender-role ideologies towards doctors (n  = 5 items; α = .837), with a positive association between the latter two (r  =  .570;p  <  .001). The N-GAMS.pt also showed good criteria-related validity. Namely, as hypothesized: (1) more empathic students reported more gender se...
Source: Advances in Health Sciences Education - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: research