The Portuguese version of Nijmegen Gender Awareness in Medicine Scale: adaptation and validation study

Abstract

Health-care professionals’ Gender Awareness has been discussed as a way to minimize gender biases in health. The present paper aimed to adapt and validate the Nijmegen Gender Awareness in Medicine Scale (N-GAMS) to the Portuguese population. This scale measures, gender sensitivity and gender-role ideology towards patients and doctors. One thousand and forty eight medicine students (M age = 22.90; 67.1% women) answered to the Portuguese version of the N-GAMS along with measures of Medical Empathy (JSPE-spv) and Sexism (ASI) in order to investigate the scale’s construct and criterion validity. The scale three-fold structure was supported by a Confirmatory Factorial Analysis (CFI =.918, NFI =.883, IFI =.918; RMSEA =.062¸ χ² [134] = 407.503, p <.001) : 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 Also, N-GAMS showed a good concurrent validity; gender sensitivity was positively associated with medical empathy and gender-role ideology was negatively associated with medical empathy and positively associated with sexism. To conclude, N-GAMS showed to be a reliable and valid instrument that may be used for research and interventional purposes in order to decrease gender bias in health.