Development of a self-checklist for occupational therapists to share information with care workers at special elderly nursing homes in Japan

Abstract

Collaboration between occupational therapists (OTs) and care workers (CWs) is important in special elderly nursing homes. Information sharing has been reported as the central element of such collaboration. The purpose of this research was to develop a self-checklist to evaluate how much OTs are involved in factors promoting information sharing when they communicate [A1] with CWs in special elderly nursing homes. We conducted a 19 item questionnaire survey with 401 OTs working in special elderly nursing homes. Analysis of data was based on item response theory (IRT). Completed questionnaires were collected from 298 people (collection rate 74.3%). We set 223 as effective number of respondents (effective response rate 55.6%). The IRT result was 64 points when the test response function (TRF, θ) equaled 0. The discrimination parameter (a) was 0.980, the range was 0.599 to 1.197, and all discriminatory power values were 0.5 or more. The difficulty parameter was 0.346 for b1, −1.275 for b2, −2.538 for b3, and all the difficulty parameters were within an absolute value of 4.0. The test information function (TIF, θ) value of −1.6 to −1.2 indicated the upper limit to be 5.6. It is conceivable that the checklist is appropriate for scale configuration in all items. While the checklist has low measurement accuracy when administered to OTs with a high ability to promote information sharing, when implemented for OTs with moderate capacity, the measurement accuracy is sufficiently conceivable.