Team Development Measure (TDM)

National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education's picture
Submitted by National Center... on Sep 6, 2016 - 11:12am CDT

Instrument
Authors: 
Stock, R.
Mahoney, E.
Carney, P. A.
Overview: 

This self-report tool was designed to assess the degree to which a team has achieved aspects of effective teamwork within inpatient and ambulatory health care settings.  Specifically, the tool measures team members' perceptions of cohesion, communication, roles and goals, and team primacy in a 31-item instrument.  In a validation study, 1,194 self-identified team members (e.g., physicians, nurses, receptionists, administrators, and ancillary therapists) from 120 healthcare teams provided ratings regarding their perceptions of their experiences of working together.  Teams varied significantly in terms of size, from 3 to 39 members.  Results demonstrated good factor structure and internal consistency.  This is a developmental tool: a total score provided to participants allows them to benchmark their progress (from "initial development" to "in place" to "firmly in place").  Reporting and discussing the variability among team members perceptions allows them to see the extent to which they are "on the same page" in terms of specific team strenths and limitations.  

Link to Resources
Descriptive Elements
Who is Being Assessed or Evaluated?: 
Informal groups, networks, colleagues
Teams
Instrument Type: 
Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)
Notes for Type: 

Anonynous survey

Source of Data: 
Health care providers, staff
Notes for Data Sources: 

1,194 physicians, nurses, receptionists, administrators, and ancillary therapists representing 120 different teams within a non-profit health system. Team size ranged from three to 39 members in inpatient and ambulatory health care settings.

Instrument Content: 
Reported perceptions, experiences of working relationships, teamwork
Notes for Content: 

The tool measures 4 subdomains:

  1. Cohesion
  2. Communication
  3. Roles and goals
  4. Team primacy
Instrument Length: 

31 items; time requirements are not specified.

Item Format: 
31 item 4-point agreement scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4).
Administration: 
Not described.
Scoring: 
An overall score of team development is calculated by converting the raw scores to a 0-100 range using a Rasch model conversion. The team is also provided the distribution of scores within the team and the items with the greatest disagreement between members.
Language: 
English
Norms: 
None described.
Access: 
Open access (available on this website)
Notes on Access: 

Item content also appears in journal article.  Contact author to confirm access.

Psychometric Elements: Evidence of Validity
Content: 
Initial items derived from health care team literature as well as authors' experience with healthcare teams. The initial items were also pilot tested on 5 teams, and revisions were made based on qualitative investigation.
Response Process: 
The response rate was high (i.e., 85%).
Internal Structure: 
Factor analysis demonstrated good fit (i.e., Standardized Root Mean Square Residual = 0.05) for a four factor model. Only 24 items loaded on these four factors; however, all items were retained. Overall internal consistency reliability (i.e., Cronbach’s alpha) was 0.97. Alpha coefficients for each domain ranged from 0.76 to 0.94.
Relation to Other Variables: 
None described.
Consequential: 
None described.
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