[Construct validity of the TECS questionnaire for the quality of teamwork in surgery].

Objective: To assess the construct validity and reliability of the Trabajo en Equipo en Cirugía (TECS) questionnaire.

Method: The questionnaire was administered to 401 undergraduate students who were doing surgery practices at three universities. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on the first 200 observations, and a confirmatory factor analysis on the remaining ones. The reliability of the instrument was established with Cronbach's alpha.

Results: The average age of the study population was 22 years (± 1.4) and 65.5% were women. The factors "Student's disposition towards teamwork", "Structure of the work environment" and "Leadership and collaboration in the work team" showed excellent internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.94. The results in the exploratory factor analysis showed adequate goodness of fit with the empirical data.

Conclusions: The TECS is a valid (content and construct) and reliable instrument to assess the quality of teamwork in surgery in medical students.