Measuring Unlicensed Assistive Personnel Perceptions of a Healthy Work Environment in Acute Care Settings, Part 4

Survey items on the Healthy Work Environment Scale (HWES) for Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP) were developed using statements from a qualitative research study conducted in a large urban healthcare system.

The purposes of this research study were to develop items on the HWES for UAP, to assess the validity and reliability of this tool, and to describe the UAP perceptions of a healthy work environment (HWE) using a nonexperimental descriptive design.

This research study has 2 separate phases. In phase 1, the UAP assigned each item to 1 of the 8 characteristics of an HWE to assess face validity. The 2nd step in this phase was to have the 10 content experts rate each survey item based on its relevancy to measuring an HWE using a 4-point Likert scale ranging from "not relevant" to "very relevant" to determine content validity by calculating a scale content validity and item content validity indices. Based on the results, there were no items deleted from the survey. In phase 2, principal component analysis assessed the validity of the tool, a Cronbach's α served as the test for reliability, and the UAP perceptions of an HWE were measured.

Samples included 45 content experts for phase 1 and 406 for phase 2. Principal component analysis revealed 49 items comprising 6 components. Internal consistency was 0.976 for all items. Based on the findings, the HWES for UAP demonstrated strong psychometric properties to measure an HWE in acute care settings.