Abstract
An adequate work climate fosters productivity in organizations and increases employee satisfaction. Workers in emergency health services (EHS) have an extremely high degree of responsibility and consequent stress. Therefore, it is essential to foster a good work climate in this context. Despite this, scales with a full study of their psychometric properties (i.e., validity evidence based on test content, internal structure and relations to other variables, and reliability) are not available to measure work climate in EHS specifically. For this reason, our objective was to develop a scale to measure the quality of work climates in EHS. We carried out three studies. In Study 1, we used a mixed-method approach to identify the latent conceptual structure of the construct work climate. Thus, we integrated the results found in (a) a previous study, where a content analysis of seven in-depth interviews obtained from EHS professionals in two hospitals in Gibraltar Countryside County was carried out; and (b) the factor analysis of the responses given by 113 EHS professionals from these same centers to 18 items that measured the work climate in health organizations. As a result, we obtained 56 items grouped into four factors (work satisfaction, productivity/achievement of aims, interpersonal relationships, and performance at work). In Study 2, we presented validity evidence based on test content through experts' judgment. Fourteen experts from the methodology and health fields evaluated the representativeness, utility, and feasibility of each of the 56 items with respect to their factor (theoretical dimension). Forty items met the inclusion criterion, which was to obtain an Osterlind index value greater than or equal to 0.5 in the three aspects assessed. In Study 3, 201 EHS professionals from the same centers completed the resulting 40-item scale. This new instrument produced validity evidence based on the internal structure in a second-order factor model with four components (RMSEA = 0.079, GFI = 0.97, AGFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.97; NFI = 0.95, and NNFI = 0.97); absence of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in 80% of the items; reliability (α = 0.96); and validity evidence based on relations to other variables, specifically the test-criterion relationship (ρ = 0.680). Finally, we discuss further developments of the instrument and its possible implications for EHS workers.
Highlights
One of the main priorities of modern organizations is fostering a positive work climate because it promotes greater productivity, satisfaction, stability, and commitment to the organization (Lozano-Lozano et al, 2013; Lee et al, 2016; Meneghel et al, 2016)
We found proposals for scales that, in addition to reliability, provide data regarding validity evidence based on internal structure, such as the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (Sexton et al, 2016) applied in different contexts (Patterson et al, 2010), but they do not provide data about validity evidence based on test content or relations to other variables
We carried out our research in three stages (American Educational Research Association et al, 2014): (1) we identified the latent conceptual structure of work climate using a mixed-method approach based on the information obtained from in-depth interviews using the grounded theory (Lozano-Lozano et al, 2013) and factor analysis; (2) we presented validity evidence of the resultant instrument based on the test content through experts’ judgment; and (3) we assessed the psychometric properties of the final version of the instrument: we carried out studies on reliability; validity evidence based on internal structure, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Differential Item Functioning (DIF); and validity evidence based on relations to other variables, test-criterion relationships
Summary
One of the main priorities of modern organizations is fostering a positive work climate because it promotes greater productivity, satisfaction, stability, and commitment to the organization (Lozano-Lozano et al, 2013; Lee et al, 2016; Meneghel et al, 2016). There are three main types of definitions for the work climate construct: (1) those based on objective and structural characteristics of organizations (Schneider et al, 2013), (2) those that emphasize individual psychological features (Zadow et al, 2017), and (3) those focused on both organizational and individual levels. This last perspective emphasizes workers’ perception of the structure and processes occurring in work groups (Schulz et al, 2017). We find that measurement instruments are based on various numbers of components as follows: three: clarity, support and challenge (Stringer, 2002; Perry et al, 2005) and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and motivation to continue working (Zacher and Yang, 2016); four: authority, efficiency, innovation, and adaptation (Payne and Mansfield, 1978); five: communication, work conditions, job involvement, self-realization, and supervision (Torres and Zegarra, 2015) and culture, climate, burnout, engagement, and psychosomatization (Uribe-Prado et al, 2015); six: organizational clarity, rewards, decisions, leadership, social interaction, and opening (Gómez, 2004); seven: ability, recognition, internal organization, satisfaction, information received, knowledge of management, and goals and management responsiveness (García et al, 2010); eight: authority, motivation, communication, influence, decision, planning, control, and performance (Likert, 1967) and compensation and justice, teamwork, quality and effectiveness, communication, environmental sustainability, trust, security, and support (Zenteno and Durán, 2016) and relationships, management style, sense of belonging, remuneration, availability of resources, stability, clarity and consistency in management, and shared values (Fernández-Argüelles et al, 2015); nine: structure, responsibility, reward, challenge, relationships, cooperation, standards, conflict, and identity (Litwin and Stringer, 1968); ten: involvement, cohesion, support, autonomy, organization, pressure, clarity, control, innovation, and comfort (Moos and Insel, 1974); and twelve: conflict, equipment, failure, cohesion, autonomy, management, stress, cooperation, social life, lack of shared social life, logging, and marginality (DelgadoSánchez et al, 2006) and relationship with the boss, work environment, desire for changes, work satisfaction, capacity for making decisions, tolerance, communication and support, opportunity for training, flexibility of schedules, satisfaction with benefits, resources, and stress (Rojas et al, 2011)
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