Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare (Nov 2021)
Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Humanistic Professional Awareness for Healthcare Students and Providers
Abstract
Hung-Chang Liao,1,2 Cheng-Yi Huang,3,4 Ya-huei Wang5,6 1Department of Health Policy and Management, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 2Department of Medical Management, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 3School of Nursing, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 4Department of Nursing, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 5Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 6Department of Medical Education, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, TaiwanCorrespondence: Ya-huei WangDepartment of Applied Foreign Languages, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, TaiwanEmail [email protected]: This study aimed to develop an appropriate scale accessing healthcare students’ and providers’ humanistic professional awareness (HPAS-HSP).Methods: Following a literature review, stakeholder interviews, and panel discussions for item generation, 65 items for the HPAS-HSP scale were created based on a nine-point Likert scale, with 9 indicating “strongly agree” and 1 indicating “strongly disagree.” A pilot study using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), with seven hundred twenty-five medical care students and providers in Taiwan as the total sample number of the study, was administered to examine the practicability of the HPAS-HSP scale. The statistics software SPSS and AMOS 24.0 were used to examine the psychometric properties of the scale, including internal consistency, convergent validities, discriminant validities, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.Results: The EFA resulted in 21 items in three factors, with 66.221% of the total variance explained: “personal integrity and accountability” (9 items; 51.763% of the variance explained), “sensitivity to others” (6 items; 8.667% of the variance explained), and “medical professional competence” (6 items; 5.791% of the variance explained). The Cronbach’s alphas for the three subscales and the entire questionnaire ranged from 0.892 to 0.949. The CFA results yielded 20 items, with the same three factors, and demonstrated good model fit in the χ2/df ratio (1.130; p = 0.140), CFI (0.998), TFI (0.998), and RMSEA (0.013). The composite alphas ranged between 0.900 and 0.969. Convergent and discriminant validity also confirmed the stability and consistency of the scale.Conclusion: The statistical results demonstrated that the HPAS-HSP scale can be a measure to assess healthcare students’ and providers’ humanistic professional awareness.Keywords: humanistic professional awareness, healthcare students and providers, scale development, psychometric properties
