Table 1 Confirmatory factor analysis for the MSEB and ALM

MS1: In medicine, only medical experts and professors know what is right.

4.61

1.41

0.89

0.74

MS2: In medical class, whatever the teacher says is true.

MS3: Everyone has to believe what medical experts and professors say.

UC1: Medical knowledge is always true.

4.87

1.57

0.93

0.81

UC2: Once medical experts get a result from an experiment, that is the only answer.

UC3: The most important point of doing medicine is to come up with the right answer.

DE1: Sometimes medical experts may change ideas which they thought were right in the past.

4.94

1.63

0.91

0.78

DE2: The ideas in medical textbooks sometimes change.

DE3: Some ideas in medicine today are different from what medical experts used to think.

JU1: It is good to have one’s own idea before starting an experiment.

4.89

1.49

0.90

0.75

JU2: Doing medical experiments is a good way to know if a medical idea is true.

JU3: It is good to try experiments more than once to make sure if the finding is true.

SM1: When I get a poor mark on a medical test, I worry about my performance on the licensing examinations.

4.59

1.45

0.89

0.74

SM2: Even if I have studied hard for a medical test, I still worry that I may not be able to do well on it.

SM3: I worry that my performance in medical classes may not satisfy my teachers' and parents' expectations.

SS1: When learning medicine, I try to memorize the content over and over until I remember it very well.

4.59

1.25

0.83

0.62

SS2: When learning medicine, I focus on and memorize the contents which may appear in examinations.

SS3: When learning medicine, I use multiple ways of remembering to help my memory.

DM1: I always look forward to going to medical class.

4.54

1.18

0.90

0.69

DM2: I spend a lot of my free time researching medical issues which have been discussed and I am interested in.

DM3: I am satisfied with working on medical topics by myself to come up with my own conclusions.

DM4: I learn medicine because of my enjoyment of studying medical issues.

DS1: While learning medicine, I try to find the relationships among the contents which I have learned.

4.92

1.31

0.92

0.79

DS2: When learning medicine, I like to form theories to put odd things together.

DS3: I try to understand the meaning of the contents which I have read in medical textbooks.