The measurement of collaboration within healthcare settings; a systematic review protocol of measurement properties of instruments.

Abstract

REVIEW QUESTION / OBJECTIVE The objective of this review is to evaluate and compare the measurement properties of instruments that measure collaboration within healthcare settings, specifically those which have been psychometrically tested and validated. More specifically, the objectives are to: Identify studies reporting the measurement properties of instruments that measure collaboration within healthcare settings that are populated with a complex mix of participant types Identify the measurement properties assessed by each study Evaluate the reports on methodological quality and rate them Compare instruments by synthesizing the results of the evaluation. INCLUSION CRITERIA Types of participants Participants may be any healthcare professionals, the patient or any other non-professional who contributes to a patient’s care. The term participant type means the designation of any one participant, for example, “nurse”, “social worker” or “administrator”. More than two participant types is mandatory. Diversity of participant types includes the diversity observed between medical doctors, for example, oncologist, radiologist or general practitioner. Focus of this review The focus of this review will be the validity and reliability of instruments used to measure collaboration within healthcare settings. Types of outcomes The outcome of interest is validation and interpretability of the instrument being assessed that includes content validity (including face validity), construct validity (structural, criterion/concurrent, hypothesis testing) and reliability (internal consistency, test-retest). Interpretability is characterized by statistics such as mean and standard deviation which can be translated to a qualitative meaning.