Interprofessional Collaboration Scale (ICS)

Submitted by National Center... on Sep 6, 2016 - 11:12am CDT

Instrument

Authors:

Kenaszchuk, C

Reeves, S.

Nicholas, D.

Zwarenstein, M.

Overview:

The self-report tool was designed to collect perceptions of interprofessional collaboration among three different groups: nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals (to include physical therapists, pharmacists,and social workers). Specifically, perceptions of communication, isolation, and accommodation are measured in a 13-item survey. Parallel versions of the survey pair different "rater-target" dyads. That is, nurses rate their working relationships with doctors and vice versa; nurses rate allied health professionals and vice versa; and allied health professional rate physicians and vice versa. The validity study was based only on nurses' perceptions of their working relationships with physicians. (Other dyads still need to be examined.) The sample consisted of 479 respondents working in inpatient wards/services in 15 community and academic hospitals in Canada. The study reported good factor structure and expected patterns of correlations with related existing instruments, such as the Attitudes Towards Health Care Teams Scale and the Nursing Work Index. The essential purpose of the tool is to lend itself to different studies and thereby contribute to the research base in support of IPC.

Link to Resources

Resource links:

Kenaszchuk, C., Reeves, S., Nicholas, D., & Zwarenstein, M. (2010). Validity and reliability of a multiple-group measurement scale for interprofessional collaboration. BMC Health Services Research, 10:83. DOI: 10.1186/1472-6963-10-83

Attachment:

Kenaszchuk, ICS instrument.pdf

Descriptive Elements

Who is Being Assessed or Evaluated?:

Informal groups, networks, colleagues

Instrument Type:

Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)

Notes for Type:

Survey items are constructed so that doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals can rate the two other groups. The authors term this method "round robin" based on other work.

Source of Data:

Health care providers, staff

Notes for Data Sources:

Inpatient unit registered nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals in 15 community and academic hospitals in Toronto, Canada

Instrument Content:

Reported perceptions, experiences of working relationships, teamwork

Notes for Content:

Based on the validity study with nursing respondents, the 13-item tool was found to have three factors measuring:

Communication
Accommodation
Isolation

Instrument Length:

13 items per group rated for a total of 26 items; time requirements are not specified.

Item Format:

26 item 4-point agreement scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4).

Administration:

Healthcare professionals are given the full tool (i.e., 78 items) and asked to rate only those in the section for their profession.

Scoring:

The authors used average scores for items loading on each of the three factors. Scoring instructions are provided.

Language:

English

Norms:

None described.

Access:

Open access (available on this website)

Notes on Access:

It is not necessary to contact the author to confirm permission to use. The scale may be used freely except that no commercial or for-profit use is permitted.

Psychometric Elements: Evidence of Validity

Content:

Items were based a pre-existing instrument, the "Nurses’ Opinion Questionnaire," and adapted for other healthcare professional groups.

Response Process:

None described.

Internal Structure:

Exploratory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure which demonstrated good fit in the confirmatory factor analysis (i.e., Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .06; Root Mean Squared Residual (RMSR) = .06). Internal consistency reliability, Raykov’s composite reliability statistic (i.e., rho), was above 0.7 for all factors for all groups.

Relation to Other Variables:

Scores on the ICS were correlated with Collegial Nurse-Physician Relations Subscale of the Nursing Work Index (NWI-NPRS) and the sub-scales of the Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS). As expected, strong correlations were found between the NWI-NPRS and the Communication (r = 0.80), Accommodation (r = 0.73), and Isolation (r = 0.67) scores. In contrast, (and also expected) the ICS scores correlated weakly (i.e., r = 0.20 to 0.40) or negatively with the more attitudinal ATHCTS subscales.

Consequential:

None described.

Assessment & Evaluation

Interprofessional Collaboration Scale (ICS)

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