Developmental stages associated with organizational learning in hospitals: An instrument development study

To develop and test the Organizational Learning Instrument: Development Stages instrument, a measure of hospital units' readiness to engage in organizational learning.

Cognitive interviewing, expert review and a quantitative, cross-sectional survey.

Item development was informed by previous research on organizational learning. Content validity was assessed and strengthened using cycles of cognitive interviewing and expert review. The resulting instrument was distributed by email to all nurses providing direct patient care in inpatient units in 11 Magnet® hospitals. Data were collected in 2018. Intraclass correlations, using hospital unit as the grouping variable, indicated the need to use multilevel methods to analyse the survey data. Thus, coefficient omega and multilevel confirmatory factor analysis were used to estimate the instrument's reliability and construct validity, respectively.

The Organizational Learning Instrument: Development Stages is a 35-item survey comprised of four scales: Identity & Ownership, Team & Respect, Accountability & Support and Reliability & Sustainability. The expert review yielded scale-level content validity scores from 0.90 to 1.0 and item-level content validity scores from 0.86 to 1.0. Survey participants were 1212 nurses, working in 99 inpatient units, across 11 Magnet® hospitals. Intraclass correlations ranged from 0.113 to 0.158. Coefficient omega reliability for the four scales was 0.981-0.993. Standardized factor loadings for the 35 items were 0.699-0.961, with acceptable model fit statistics (comparative fit index = 0.980, Tucker-Lewis Fit Index = 0.979, and root mean squared error of approximation = 0.060).

These results indicate the instrument meets or exceeds generally accepted criteria for content validity, reliability and construct validity instrument, and is suitable for further use and testing.

Nurse administrators, managers and researchers now have a valid, reliable instrument to better foster and study organizational learning in hospital units. Advances in organizational learning are expected to improve a variety of patient, staff and organizational outcomes in hospital units.