Index of Interdisciplinary Collaboration (IIC)

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Submitted by National Center... on Oct 9, 2016 - 8:29pm CDT

Instrument
Authors: 
Bronstein, L.R.
Overview: 

The IIC is designed to assess social workers’ perception of the quality of collaborative exchanges in interdisciplinary team settings. The tool breaks down interdisciplinary collaboration into five sub-dimensions: interdependence, newly created professional activities, collective ownership of goals, reflection on process, and flexibility. The 42-item self-report questionnaire is meant to assess whether individuals are experiencing the positive interprofessional interactions measured in the tool and potentially how to improve collaboration. A validation study of 462 social workers demonstrated adequate factor structure as well as good internal and test-retest reliability. The scale also demonstrated expected relationships with several influences on interprofessional collaboration.

Link to Resources
Descriptive Elements
Who is Being Assessed or Evaluated?: 
Individuals
Instrument Type: 
Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)
Source of Data: 
Health care providers, staff
Other
Notes for Data Sources: 

The measure is specifically designed for the social work profession.  The IIC has been completed by social workers in a variety of settings, such as schools and prisons as well as health care.

Instrument Content: 
Attitudes, values, beliefs regarding IPE, IPCP, professions
Reported perceptions, experiences of working relationships, teamwork
Notes for Content: 

The tool may be used to measure a single dimension of interdisciplinary collaboration or five sub-dimensions:

  1. Interdependence
  2. Newly created professional activities
  3. Collective ownership of goals
  4. Reflection on process
  5. Flexibility
Instrument Length: 

42-items; no time length specified.

Item Format: 
5-point Likert-type scales ranging from strongly agree (1) to strongly disagree (5).
Administration: 
Questionnaires were mailed to participants in paper-and-pencil format.
Scoring: 
Average scores for the total scale or the sub-dimensions can be calculated for each individual. Several items are reverse keyed to minimize the chance of response sets influencing results.
Language: 
English
Norms: 
None described.
Access: 
Open access (available on this website)
Notes on Access: 

Contact the author to confirm permission to use.

Psychometric Elements: Evidence of Validity
Content: 
The items are based on a literature review identifying indicators commonly found in the literature. The content is based on a model developed by the author.
Response Process: 
The instrument was pilot tested with 30 social work students to assess the readability and logic of the IIC. Items were reworded based on feedback from a follow-up 30-40 minute focus group session. The response rate was 47% in the validity study.
Internal Structure: 
Factor analysis revealed a good factor 5-factor structure. Seven items were removed for insufficient loadings on any of the factors. The 5 factors explain 42.9% of the variance of which 24.7 percentage points are due to the first factor. The remaining 42-items had very good alpha reliability (i.e., alpha = 0.92). All sub-dimension alpha reliability estimates exceeded the acceptable standard of 0.75, except flexibility (i.e., alpha = .62). A small sample of social work students took the assessment twice within two weeks achieving a good test-retest reliability (i.e., 0.82, p < 0.01). Note: the AAMC reviewer felt the very high inter-correlations among all of the items suggests a stronger argument for a single global factor, rather than adoption of the subscales. scores.
Relation to Other Variables: 
Overall scores on the IIC were significantly related to indicators of professional affiliation, agency organization and structural characteristics, personal relationships among collaborators, and prior history of collaboration (r = 0.17-0.56, p < 0.01).
Consequential: 
None described.
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