Psychometrics of Assessment Tools to Examine the Challenges of Physicians' Participation in Accreditation Programs

Background: Many organizations believe that physician involvement is important in quality and safety of health services, but they did not properly define, measure, and improve it, so because of the importance of the quality of health care and increasing the involvement of physician this study was conducted to evaluate the validity and reliability of a questionnaire on the challenges of physicians' participation in quality improvement programs. Methods: In this cross-sectional study conducted in the hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, a researcher-made questionnaire about challenges of physicians' participation in accreditation activities used for data gathering. The content validity ratio index and content validity index were also calculated. To measure the internal consistency of the instrument, the questionnaire was distributed among 14 physicians, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was determined. For stability or reproducibility of the instrument, test - retest and correlation coefficient were calculated. By distributing questionnaires among 14 people those meeting inclusion criteria, the correlation coefficient was measured twice and at intervals of 2 weeks. SPSS 21 software was used for data analysis Results: The initial questionnaire was consisted of 61 items, which were reduced to 38 items after face and content psychometrics. The questionnaire has 12 sub-concepts. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.83 and the intragroup correlation coefficient in 2 measurements 2 weeks apart was 0.94. Conclusion: This questionnaire is the first and only valid and reliable dedicated tool in the field of challenges of physicians' participation in accreditation activities in Iran, which can measure and prioritize the challenges in each health center and it can be used to improve health care quality services that are performed by doctors.