Assessment of the Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale for Students-AITCS-II (Student): Development and Testing

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Teamwork Assessment
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Measuring collaborative teamwork in interprofessional students presents challenges.
• Existing teamwork evaluation often focuses on attitudes rather than collaborative actions.
• A need exists for a student-specific tool to assess interprofessional collaboration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report on the psychometric properties of the Assessment of the Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale, Version II (AITCS-II) specifically for students.
• To adapt and validate a measure for assessing collaboration within interprofessional student groups.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 316 student respondents for descriptive analysis.
• Conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).
• Developed a 16-item scale based on EFA factors, tested for model fit in CFA.

Main Results:

• The AITCS-II for students demonstrated a reasonable model fit.
• The scale comprises 16 items across four latent variables: partnership, cooperation, team working, and coordination.
• Factor structure included 3 items for partnership, 6 for cooperation, 4 for team working, and 3 for coordination.

Conclusions:

• The student version of the AITCS-II shows evidence of validity and reliability.
• This scale can be effectively used to assess collaboration in interprofessional student teams.
• Provides a valuable tool for understanding and improving student teamwork in healthcare education.