Measuring Attitudes towards Health Services Research among Representatives of German Rehabilitation Facilities: The REHA-KNOWS Study

Abstract

The REHA-KNOWS study explores the perceptions of practice representatives of rehabilitation facilities in Southwest Germany regarding (healthcare) research and shows benefits and barriers in knowledge transfer from the perspective of practice. For this purpose, an instrument with 12 5-level items was developed, which is exploratively examined in this paper. The instrument includes statements on the benefits, costs and added value of rehabilitation research projects as well as on the framework conditions in the facilities. Between March and May 2023, data were collected from representatives of 206 rehabilitation facilities in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Saarland using an online questionnaire. A descriptive analysis of distribution properties was performed. Furthermore, an exploratory factor analysis using Horn's parallel analysis and Velicier's Minimum Average Partial was conducted to determine the underlying factor structure and unidimensionality. In addition, Mann-Whitney U tests were calculated to determine differences in responses between representatives in the fields of medicine, nursing and therapy and personnel with administrative and management tasks. Overall, the instrument had few missing values with acceptable scatter and low item difficulty. Floor and ceiling effects were negligible but did occur for three items. Differences in response patterns between occupational groups were found descriptively for items 2, 10, and 12. After p-value correction for multiple testing, they became insignificant. Four items were excluded from the factor analysis due to poor fit, which then yielded a single-factor solution with 31% variance resolution. The fit of the overall model was not satisfactory. The identified factor is best described as "attitude toward the usefulness of research for practice". Responses to the open-ended question about previous experience with research activities provided evidence that further items should be generated to cover the cost-benefit ratio with a focus on monetary compensation for the (human) effort involved. The newly developed instrument lays the foundation for systematically recording the attitudes of representatives of rehabilitation facilities towards (healthcare) research. Further research is needed to improve the measurement tool to elucidate this complex issue.