Development of the Attitudes Toward Integrated Health Care Scale

Author

Jessica Zvonkovic, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

5-1-2015

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Chwalisz, Kathleen

Abstract

This study created and tested a measure of the attitudes of health care providers toward integrated health care (IHC). Phase one of this scale development involved contacting experts in IHC to rate the quality of the items and provide qualitative feedback regarding content of the measure. The instrument was further revised based on this expert feedback. The final phase of instrument development was a field test of the measure with a larger, more representative sample of Physicians, Nurses, and Psychologists. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to determine the factor structure of the measure and to inform the final item composition of the measure. The Attitudes Toward Integrated Health Care scale (ATIHC) appears to be a reliable, valid, and potentially useful instrument for researchers and health care settings to use to assess professionals attitudes toward health care integration. It taps general positive and negative attitudes as well as ideas about characteristics that facilitate health care integration. Since there is now a base knowledge of health professional's attitudes toward IHC, work needs to be completed to better discern which items will differentiate between participants with positive and negative attitudes. Further, it will be essential to highlight items having the largest practical implications in health settings. In order to determine the most relevant questions to be included in the ATIHC and the corresponding most appropriate factor structure, further research should be completed with a larger and more representative sample of participants who posses a wider range of attitudes.