Measuring Organizational Readiness in a Community Health Promotion Program: Instrument Tailoring and Psychometric...

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Community Health
• Program Evaluation

Background:

• Community-based health promotion requires tailored readiness assessment tools.
• Existing instruments may not capture unique organizational characteristics.
• The Readiness Diagnostic Scale (RDS) needed adaptation for community settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To tailor and validate the Readiness Diagnostic Scale (RDS) for community organizations implementing the 'Choose to Move' (CTM) program.
• To develop a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing organizational readiness in health promotion.
• To identify key factors contributing to readiness in community-based health initiatives.

Main Methods:

• A three-stage process involving item refinement and psychometric evaluation.
• Adaptation of the 50-item RDS for the CTM program.
• Exploratory factor analysis on data from 207 community organization members.

Main Results:

• A 42-item scale, RDS-CTM, with a four-factor structure emerged.
• A new factor, General Capacity-Staff, highlighted staff's importance.
• The scale demonstrated strong reliability (α = .91–.95) and explained 59% of variance.

Conclusions:

• The RDS-CTM is a practical and reliable tool for assessing readiness to implement CTM.
• It can inform capacity-building, resource allocation, and implementation decisions.
• The RDS-CTM framework may be adaptable for other community health promotion programs.