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

The challenge of measuring collaborative teamwork among interprofessional students has been reported in the literature. Emphasis in evaluating teamwork has been on socialization and attitudes towards wanting to work with others and not on other aspects of teamwork such as collaboration in teamwork. To date, while the Assessment of the Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS) has been used generically to measure collaboration in both practitioner and student 'teams,' it has been suggested that there may be a need for a student-specific version of this measure. The purpose of this paper is to report on the psychometric properties of the AITCS-II for students. Data sets from 316 student respondents completing pretest assessments of team collaboration were used for a descriptive analysis of the ATICS. Both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were carried out. Factors from the EFA were then used in the CFA to obtain a good model fit. The result was a 16-item AITCS-II for students that demonstrated a reasonable model fit related to four latent variables: partnership (3 items), cooperation (6 items), team working (4 items) and coordination (3 items). In conclusion, the student version of the AITCS-II provides some evidence for its validity and reliability that can be used to assess collaboration in interprofessional student groups.