An investigation of the criterion problem for a group of medical general practitioners

Abstract

The sample consisted of 217 general practitioners from Utah. 80 scores relevant to the performance of these physicians were collected from a variety of scores, intercorrelated, and factor analyzed using the principal components solution based on eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The 30 factors which had an eigenvalue greater than 1.00 were rotated by the varimax procedure and interpreted. The most important finding was the great criterion complexity for this group of physicians. This complexity suggests that one cannot adequately measure physician performance on the basis of a single score or a few scores. Instead, one must obtain a relatively large number of scores. Performance in both premedical and medical education was independent of performance as a physician. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)