The Development and Validation of a Communication Survey Instrument for Long-term Care Staff.

Area of Science:

• Gerontology and Healthcare Communication
• Health Services Research
• Nursing and Allied Health

Background:

• Fragmented information transfer is a significant challenge in long-term care (LTC) settings.
• Effective communication among staff, providers, residents, and family caregivers is crucial for quality care.
• Existing methods for assessing communication skills in LTC staff are insufficient.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and refine an 11-item survey instrument to measure the self-efficacy of LTC staff in communication.
• To identify specific training needs to enhance communication practices within LTC environments.
• To establish the content validity of the developed survey instrument.

Main Methods:

• A comprehensive literature review informed the survey's design, focusing on four key communication concepts.
• Ten content experts evaluated each survey item using a 4-point Likert scale.
• Content validity index (CVI) was calculated to assess item and scale-level validity.

Main Results:

• All 11 survey items achieved a content validity index of 0.90 or greater, indicating strong content validity.
• The survey effectively covers critical aspects of health information communication in LTC.
• The instrument is deemed reliable and ready for further validation.

Conclusions:

• The developed survey instrument demonstrates strong content validity for assessing LTC staff communication self-efficacy.
• This tool can guide the design of targeted continuing education programs to improve interprofessional communication.
• Future research should focus on broad-scale validation across diverse US LTC settings.