When I say ... attitude

Abstract

Attitude is a ubiquitous term in health professions education (HPE). Accompanied by knowledge and skills, it rolls off the tongue when discussing competencies and educational objectives.1,2 As part of the tripartite structure (KSAs), attitudes generally aim to capture all the essential personal elements of learning and performance that are NOT knowledge and skills, including motivation, dispositions, traits, personal characteristics, perceptions, judgements and emotions. Unfortunately, the broadness of this conceptualisation limits the utility of attitudes for specific operational purposes such as curriculum development, assessment and educational research. We see value in the construct of attitude and propose a conceptualisation grounded in literature from social psychology—a field that studies people's attitudes as a core subject and that can provide a theoretical basis for the concept.3