Internal consistency of the readiness for interprofessional learning scale in German health care students and professionals

Abstract

BackgroundThe implementation of a bachelor degree in “Interprofessional Health Care” at the University of Heidelberg, Germany has fostered the need to evaluate the impact of this innovative programme. The Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) was developed by Parsell and Bligh (1999) to assess student’s attitudes towards interprofessional education. The RIPLS consists of 19 items and four subscales were identified by McFadyen (J Interprof Care19:595–603, 2005): “teamwork and collaboration”, “negative professional identity”, “positive professional identity” and “roles and responsibilities”. The RIPLS has been translated into a number of languages and used in a variety of different educational settings. A German version of the RIPLS was not available. Aim of the study was the translation of the RIPLS into German and testing of internal consistency.MethodsThe RIPLS was translated to German according to international guidelines and its psychometric properties were assessed in two online surveys with two different samples a) health care graduates and b) health care students. Descriptive analysis (mean, SD, corrected item-total correlation) of the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale – German (RIPLS-D) was performed for item characteristics and Cronbach’s Alpha was calculated for internal consistency of overall and subscales of the RIPLS-D.ResultsEach sample consisted of 76 datasets. Reliability for the RIPLS-D overall scale was 0.83 in both samples. The subscales displayed internal consistency between 0.42 and 0.88. Corrected item-total correlation showed low values in two subscales in the sample of graduates.ConclusionsWhile the overall RIPLS-D scale is reliable, several subscales showed low values and should be used with caution to measure readiness for interprofessional learning in the German health care context. Internal consistency of the instrument does not seem to be given in health care professionals at different stages of their professional career. In particular the sub-scale “roles and responsibilities” was problematic. For these reasons, the RIPLS-D cannot be recommended for use to assess this concept.

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.…”

“…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.…”

Interprofessional learning: learning gain and change of attitude in first semester medical students / Interprofessionelles Lernen: Lernzuwachs und Einstellungsänderung bei Medizinstudierenden im 1. Semester

“…Fragebogens "Readiness for interprofessional Learning Scale" (RIPLS) verwendet (Parsell & Bligh, 1999; deutsche Version RIPLS-D von Mahler et al, 2014 Auf Grund der in der Literatur mehrfach nachgewiesenen ungenügenden internen Konsistenz der Subskalen 2 und 3 des Instrumentes wurden diese in der vorliegenden Untersuchung nicht berücksichtigt. Alle Items sind als Aussagen formuliert, die auf einer fünfstufigen Skala von 1 = trifft gar nicht zu" bis 5 = "trifft sehr zu" beantwortet werden können.…”

“…Die Spannweite der Subskala beträgt 9 bis 45 Punkte. Die interne Konsistenz der Subskala 1 ist in der untersuchten Stichprobe gut (Cronbachs Alpha 0.80) und vergleichbar mit den Resultaten anderer Studien (Mahler et al, 2014;Parsell & Bligh, 1999 …”