French translation and validation of the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) in a Canadian undergraduate healthcare student context

Abstract

The Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative recommends that future professionals be prepared for collaborative practice. To do so, it is necessary for them to learn about the principles of interprofessional collaboration. Therefore, to ascertain if students are predisposed, their attitude toward interprofessional learning must be assessed. In the French Canadian context such a measuring tool has not been published yet. The purpose of this study is to translate in French an adapted version of the RIPLS questionnaire and to validate it for use with undergraduate students from seven various health and social care programmes in a Canadian university. According to Vallerand's methodology, a method for translating measuring instruments: (i) the forward-backward translation indicated that six items of the experimental French version of the RIPLS needed to be more specific; (ii) the experimental French version of the RIPLS seemed clear according to the pre-test assessing items clarity; (iii) evaluation of the content validity indicated that the experimental French version of the RIPLS presents good content validity and (iv) a very good internal consistency was obtained (α = 0.90; n = 141). Results indicate that the psychometric properties of the RIPLS in French are comparable to the English version, although a different factorial structure was found. The relevance of three of the 19 items on the RIPLS scale is questionable, resulting in a revised 16-item scale. Future research aimed at validating the translated French version of the RIPLS could also be conducted in another francophone cultural context.

A Test Adaptation of the Modified Readiness for Inter-professional Learning Scale in Turkish

“…The index values obtained in the present study were higher than those obtained from other RIPLS adaptation studies; as a result, the structure of the tested Turkish version of the scale is thought to be consistent. In the present study, after CFA, similar values were obtained with the structure suggested and confirmed by Parsell and Bligh 21 and with those tested and confirmed by Lauffs et al 23 and Mahler et al 26 With the exception of Cloutier et al, 25 the team and collaboration sub-scale in all studies was consistent with the results of Parsell and Bligh. 21 The lowest degree of reliability was obtained in the roles and responsibilities sub-scale in the present study; similarly, Parsell's study also yielded low levels of reliability in the same sub-scale.…”

“…Different studies show inconsistent results for the professional identity sub-scale. [21][22][23]26 The most outstanding results among the adaptation studies were obtained by Cloutier et al 25 The 18 th and 19 th items in that study were excluded, and the remaining items were associated with different, re-named factors. The titles of the sub-scales and their associations with the factors are different in the Japanese 24 and the French 25 adaptations of the original scale; when those adaptation studies were investigated, it was noted that an approach that considered cultural differences and subject fields was necessary to obtain similar results to the original scale.…”

“…Similar results were observed for items 18 and 19. When high error values were considered, it was possible to exclude these items, as done by Cloutier et al 25 ; however, this exclusion decreased the degrees of freedom (df) and increased the X 2 and RMSEA values. Therefore, we kept all 19 items in the scale (Table 5).…”

“…It can be seen that the same recommendation is also valid for the Turkish version of RIPLS; on the other hand, when the scale is considered as a single dimension, the measurement tools obtained from the adaptation studies yield similar results by producing similar Cronbach's Alpha values for single-dimension professional readiness measurements. [21][22][23]25,27 …”

“…Numerous efforts have been made to adapt the RIPLS into different cultures and languages. The scale was adapted to the Swedish, 23 Japanese, 24 French, 25 German, 26 and Indonesian 27 languages. Further validity and reliability studies were also conducted for the test in different languages and cultures.…”