the national commission for academic accreditation and assessment ( ncaaa ) is responsible for the academic accreditation of universities in the kingdom of saudi arabia ( ksa ) . ncaaa has instituted several key performance indicators to measure various attributes of the quality of higher education institutions . one of the requirements of this is the evaluation of students attitudes toward research training programs . there has also been a significant shift toward providing health science students with early research experience in their curriculum . the resident research activities have several benefits such as the teaching of skills relevant to evidence - based medicine , promotion of lifelong learning , and an inspiration to residents ' career choices and continued scholarly work . previous studies which also showed the relationship between research programs and medical education indicated that research had a positive impact on the motivation of medical students . similarly , it is likely that doctors who had participated in a scientific program during their academic career would make more accurate diagnoses and better professional decisions . despite these merits of research work , many obstacles lie in the path of health science students who want to take part in research . this study was thus conducted to explore the attitude of saudi health sciences toward their participation in research . it was expected that , any issues raised by the students in the course of the survey of their attitudes can be easily addressed . appropriate reforms can be undertaken to improve the quality of research training programs in ksa . moreover , at the undergraduate level , students tend to have a negative view of courses on research methods . a better understanding of these attitudes is , therefore , necessary to help instructors create a more positive attitude in their students toward the courses in order to facilitate their learning of research . exploration of the literature , revealed that instruments for measuring the attributes of research training programs from the students ' point of view were limited . through this study , a standard questionnaire instrument tool was devised to garner the research attitudes of the students , and establish its appropriate validity and reliability . the primary aim of this study was to develop a valid reliable instrument to measure students ' attitude toward research training programs . it was to discover the opinion of students about the availability of research training programs in selected health sciences colleges in ksa . furthermore , it dealt with the degree of involvement of the students in these programs and the obstacles they encountered in their attempt to get involved in research . the students ' attitude toward the research ( sar ) questionnaire was used to assess the attitude of students of the health sciences toward research training activities offered at the level of higher education institutions in ksa . it was structured in a fashion that would allow the results to be interpreted in the light of national and international recommendations . this instrument consisted of 16 items related to three different attitude subscales , as follows : ( a ) attitude of students to the research activities offered in the college , ( b ) students ' opinion of faculty involvement in research , and ( c ) students ' opinion of the infrastructural facilities offered by the college for research . each item of the instrument used a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree . a total of 564 students were invited by stratified sampling method from 19 different health science colleges from seven government universities in ksa . care had been taken to get a wide representation of samples by covering all provinces of ksa . the study was conducted in a 12-month period covering the academic year 2011 - 2012 . the students belonging to the health sciences colleges cluster of the seven selected government universities located in four different geographical zones in the ksa were the focus of this study . only the final year / internship students in the selected health sciences colleges were recruited as the sample for this study . it was based on survey data collected as part of the study on students ' attitudes toward research training program . a self - administered questionnaire consisting of 16 closed - ended items with ordinal - level response choices was used to assess attitudes of university students toward research training programs . the test of validity and reliability of the questionnaire was based on the undergraduate students ' opinion on the research training program offered in the selected health sciences colleges in ksa . the evaluation of questionnaire 's reliability - internal consistency was made possible by cronbach 's  , which is considered the most important reliability index , and is based on the number of the variables / items of the questionnaire , as well as on correlations between the variables . the reliability of the instrument means that its results are characterized by repetitiveness and not connected with measurement errors . an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assess the dimensions of the students ' attitude to the research training program scale . the author used principal axis analysis in spss version 19.0 ( illinois , usa ) as the extraction method . based on the relatively high correlations among the majority of items ( > 0.3 ) , an oblique rotation was performed using promax . three criteria from green and salkind were applied to determine the number of factors to be retained : ( 1 ) the absolute values of the eigenvalues ; ( 2 ) the relative values of the eigenvalues ; and ( 3 ) the relative interpretability of the rotated solutions . in addition , a scree plot and variance explained by the factor solution were also considered in making decisions to retain or exclude factors . then a principal components analysis with varimax rotation which produces the dimension of differentiation was used to confirm the scale construct validity . to determine if the sub - scales were suitable for factor analysis , two statistical tests were used . the first was the bartlett 's test of sphericity , which examined the inter - independence of the subscales of the scale , and the second was the criterion kaiser - meyer - olkin ( kmo ) ( kmo measure of sampling adequacy , kmo ) , which examined sample sufficiency . the main method of extracting factors is the analysis of main components with right - angled rotation of varimax type , so that the variance between loads of variables are maximized on a specific factor , thus reducing the size of small loads , making big loads bigger , and finally , minimizing those with intermediate values . the criterion of eigenvalue or characteristic root ( eigenvalue ) 1 was used to define the number of factors that were kept . model acceptance was based on two criteria : ( a ) in order to be included in the variable cluster of a factor , each variable must have loaded to it > 0.5 and ( b ) < 0.4 to the rest of the factors . moreover , each factor must have more than two variables . in addition , it was considered that on the basis of common variable communalities , the variables with high communality ( h ) imply great contribution to the factorial model . reliability statistics [ table 1 ] showed the value of the coefficient of cronbach for the research scale as 0.768 . this was over the 70% , which is a good value for the internal consequence of the conceptual construction of the investigated scale . if release of units continues in the same way , i.e. with the standardized value of the variables , the coefficient cronbach  will slightly increase the value of  to 0.788 . this means that even if the number of the items is increased , cronbach  will take the value of 0.788 . reliability statistics on sar scale the table scale statistics [ table 2 ] gives scores that are related to the entire scale , which presents a mean of 49.88 and a standard deviation of the class of 6.822 units . table 3 shows the detailed results of the evaluation of the internal consistency for each sub - scale ( factor ) of the questionnaire of sar , and also indicates that the internal consistency of the questions making up each sub - scale was extremely high ( cronbach 's  > 0.7 ) . the integrity of the instrument as a whole has been demonstrated by invariably positive and significant inter - factor correlations [ table 4 ] . evaluation of the internal consistency of the sub - scales of questionnaire for evaluation of the sar ( cronbach 's  ) correlation between the sub - scales initially , the relevance of the data used for the factor analysis was confirmed . the statistical criteria kmo ( kmo = 0.524 ) and the bartlett test of sphericity ( value 556.442 , p < 0.001 ) [ table 5 ] , indicated that the raw data were suitable for the implementation of factor analysis . eventually , from the following values [ table 6 ] of common communality , we learnt that the majority of the questions had a value higher than 0.50 , which indicates that the quality of the measurements is satisfactory . kmo and bartlett 's test communalities on sar scale factor analysis was performed for the evaluation of the construct validity of the questionnaire for the sar . from the 16 original questions used in the factor analysis , three factors came off , using the kaiser criterion and varimax orthogonal rotation . the overall rate of variation of the initial data indicated that three factors interpreted in common , amounted to 62.079% . factor analysis extracted three factors which conjointly explained 62.079% of the variance in students ' attitudes [ table 7 ] . the present study has achieved its main objective , namely the validation of the sar questionnaire . the initial face validity and content validity the internal consistency and reliability of the extracted factors were ascertained by cronbach 's  coefficients . the integrity of the instrument as a whole has been demonstrated by invariably positive and significant inter - factor correlations . the 16 items making up our instrument is intermediate among the reported range of 13 to 100 . the number of three extracted factors is modal among the reported range of 3 to 11 factors . the explained variance of 62.079% is exceeded by only one out of 13 studies ranging in variance from 44% to 68% . our within - factor  coefficients ranging from 0.71 to 0.79 were intermediate among 25 other studies in which the range reported was from 0.43 to 0.90 . these comparisons justify the recommendation of the use of this questionnaire on students ' attitude toward research training programs in various academic settings . the recommendations are as follows : ( 1 ) the results of this study need to be re - examined with other samples of students studying different courses . ( 2 ) relationships between students ' attitude and achievement in research have to be explored . overall , the study results validate the utilization of the sar scale in measuring students ' attitude toward research . further studies are needed to identify and incorporate some hitherto unused determinants of students ' attitude . the study successfully developed and validated a students ' attitude toward research training program questionnaire suitable for health science colleges . the following three attributes make sar strongly commendable for the investigation of the state of sar in various academic settings . they are the ( i ) explained variance of 62.079% , ( ii ) the overall 0.768  coefficients of internal consistency reliability , and ( iii ) the invariably positive and significant inter - factor correlations . moreover , sample sufficiency tested by kmo , and content and construct validity of the instrument tested by product moment correlation and principle component analysis , indicated a high reliability ( internal consistency ) and good content , construct and criterion - related validity . this is , therefore , a reliable valid tool for measuring students ' attitude toward research training program in health science colleges . it is therefore , recommended that this tool be incorporated or adapted by colleges and universities as one of the means of assessing sar training programs .
objective : the aim of this paper was to determine the validity and reliability of a questionnaire tool for measuring students ' attitudes toward components relevant to research training programs in the kingdom of saudi arabia.materials and methods : the paper reports the responses of 564 saudi arabian students from seven government universities to the questionnaire comprising 16 items on 3 conceptual subscales , which measured students ' attitude to research activities in the college ; students ' opinion of faculty involvement in research ; and infrastructural facilities in the college . the results of this study provide the final scale , with all the 16 items of the initial likert scale , for which strong evidence was obtained.results:results indicated that the students ' attitude toward the research ( sar ) scale had three latent factors , which explained 62% of the variance : the three subscales measured includes : ( i ) research activities offered in the college , ( ii ) students ' opinion of faculty involvement in research , and ( iii ) infrastructural facilities offered in the college for research . the full scale including three subscales had good internal consistency ( rs = 0.72 and  = 0.77 for full scale ; and  between 0.71 and 0.79 for three subscales).conclusion : this study provides evidence of reliability and validity of the sar scale for the measurement of students ' attitudes toward research training programs in saudi arabian universities . 
 the research findings will provide the basis for further research on health science students .