PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE TURKISH VERSION OF THE EMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION SCALE FOR HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

This study aimed to adapt the Emotional Communication Scale, which assesses emotional communication in healthcare professionals in Türkiye, into Turkish and investigate its psychometric properties. This study has a methodological design for the psychometric testing and validation of the Emotional Communication Scale. The mean age of participants was 31.31 years (SD = 9.94), with ages ranging from 19 to 60; of the 197 participants, 46 (23.4%) were males and 151 (76.6%) were females. In the first stage of the study, language equivalence was ensured. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with the IBM AMOS 24.0 package program for construct validity. According to the CFA results, the Turkish version of the scale has 14 items and 3-dimensional structure, as in the English version. The model fit indices of the scale were acceptable (χ2/df=1.92, CFI=0.94, TLI=0.92, IFI=0.94, GFI=0.91, RMSEA=0.07, and SRMR=0.03). The item-total correlation coefficients of the scale ranged between 0.510 and 0.643. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.885 for the whole scale, 0.838 for the communicative proactivity, 0.770 for the openness authenticity, and 0.680 for the listening. The Turkish version of the Emotional Communication Scale is a measurement tool with high content validity and internal consistency that can be used to assess the emotional communication attitudes of healthcare professionals. The scale can help healthcare professionals determine their attitudes toward emotional communication. Therefore, this tool will aid in developing training programs for communication, design, and evaluation of training processes aimed at helping professionals working in the healthcare field.