Development and Validity Testing of the Medical Student Artificial Intelligence Information Literacy Scale (MS-AIILS)

Background: To develop an artificial intelligence information literacy scale suitable for medical students and to test its reliability and validity, providing a scientifically reliable tool for assessing medical students' information literacy in artificial intelligence-related fields. Methods: Based on the Higher Education Information Literacy Competency Standards, the initial version of the scale was developed through literature review, semi-structured interviews, and Delphi expert consultation. A convenience sampling method was used to select 516 medical students from two medical colleges in Henan Province for a questionnaire survey. The final scale structure was determined through item analysis, exploratory factor analysis (n=250), and confirmatory factor analysis (n=266). Results: The final scale consists of 19 items, divided into four dimensions: information need identification, information acquisition, information evaluation, and information use. Regarding content validity, the scale's level content validity index (S-CVI) = 0.975, and the item level content validity index (I-CVI) = 0.833–1.000. Exploratory factor analysis extracted four common factors, with a cumulative variance of 70.244%; confirmatory factor analysis indicated good model fit (χ²/df = 3.31, RMSEA = 0.050, CFI = 0.971). In terms of reliability, the Cronbach's α coefficient for the total scale was 0.905; the correlation coefficients between each dimension and the total scale in the convergent validity analysis ranged from 0.722 to 0.750 ( P <0.001); the correlation coefficients between the total score and each dimension of the criterion-referenced tool (AI literacy scale for college students) were 0.497–0.813 ( P <0.05). Conclusion: The AI information literacy scale developed in this study has good reliability and validity and can be used to assess AI information literacy among medical students, providing a basis for subsequent educational interventions and research. Clinical trial number: not applicable