Revisiting the attitudes toward health care teams scale: Developing a short version for graduate health care education

Abstract

ABSTRACT As interprofessional education (IPE) becomes more common in student training programs, reliable and valid scales are needed to measure students’ perceptions of the experience. The Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS) was developed to measure students’ attitudes toward IPE programs using 14 items loaded on two factors. In this paper, we used the ATHCTS scale to assess the effects of a three-semester long health care IPE program on three cohorts of nurse practitioner, occupational therapy, and physical therapy graduate students with three measurement points across two university sites (N = 367). Confirmatory factor analysis on the baseline data of the first cohort revealed unacceptable fit indices; in addition, not all items were applicable, some items had double or low factor loadings, and positively and negatively worded items loaded on separate factors, indicating potential answering bias, and both factors were highly correlated. We thus conducted further item analyses and propose a short version of the ATHCTS using six items with one reverse coded item, describing the quality of interprofessional care in a more parsimonious way. The factor structure of the six-item version was tested using confirmatory factor analysis on the baseline data of cohort 2 and 3. Results were compared to the 14-item version, and fit indices confirmed a better fit to the data than the old version. Using the shortened scale, student attitudes were compared over the course of the program and between both sites. Results showed that site 2 students’ attitudes remained very positive over time, while site 1 students’ attitudes declined significantly. We suggest this finding is related to the consistency of team membership at site 2 and discuss the implications for IPE program design.