Student Perceptions of Collaboration Skills in an Interprofessional Context: Development and Initial Validation of the Self-Assessed Collaboration Skills Instrument

Leslie Hinyard's picture
Submitted by Leslie Hinyard on Jan 23, 2018 - 9:56am CST

Resource Type: 
Tool

An integral component of interprofessional education (IPE) is the development of a collaboration-ready health-care workforce.  While collaboration is a fundamental element of IPE, there is no existing measure of collaboration skills that is not context specific.  This article describes the development and initial validation of the Self-Assessed Collaboration Skills (SACS) measure.  Items were initially drawn from the Collaboration Skills Assessment Tool rubric, an educational assessment tool.  The SACS measure was piloted in a sample of students in and introductory IPE course.  Following scale revision, the SACS was piloted a second time in a sample of students in an IPE health systems course and then valdiated in a sample of students in an introductory IPE course.  Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess scale factor structure in Pilots 1 and 2 and confirmatory factor analysis to confirm factor structure in the validation sample.  Convergent and discriminant validity were also assessed.  The final SACS measure is an 11-item scale consisting of three dimensions of collaboration: information sharing, learning, and team support.  The SACS measure demonstrates high internal consistency and both convergent and discriminant validity as a measur eof collaboration.  The SACS can be implemented in any setting for assessing collaboration in clinical and nonclinical contexts.

Author(s): 
Hinyard, Leslie
Toomey, Eileen
Eliot, Kathrin
Breitbach, Anthony
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