Abstract

Background: Professional Social Responsibility is now imperative for the practice of medicine. However, there are no instruments to assess it among physicians. Aim: To construct and evaluate the factorial structure and reliability of a questionnaire designed to measure socially responsible behavior in physicians. Material and Methods: The Questionnaire on Medical Socially Responsible Behavior, consisting of 34 items, was constructed. It was applied to 284 physicians and medical students. After eliminating respondents who omitted questions, a valid sample of 214 individuals aged 23 to 67 years (51.4% males) was obtained. We assessed the factorial structure, reliability, discriminative ability of the items and correlation between factors. Results: Exploratory factorial analysis, conducted using the principal axis method, identified the presence of three factors and considered 30 items. The reliability of the factors, assessed using Cronbach's alpha, ranged from 0.73 to 0.89. Only one item had a low correlation of 0.3. Correlations between the three factors were direct and high. Conclusions: The developed questionnaire presents a definite factorial structure, with internally consistent and correlated factors and with adequate psychometric properties.