Psychometric evaluation of scales assessing interprofessional practice attitudes and skills for collaborative classroom-based language intervention

Background

Developing professionals’ skills for interprofessional practice is critical for both healthcare and educational settings. To refine interprofessional education curricula, validated outcome measures are needed.

Purpose

This study evaluated the measurement properties of an item set for assessing attitudes toward school-based interprofessional practice, and used the scales to assess the attitudes of preservice teachers and preservice speech-language pathologists (SLPs).

Method

Forty-seven preservice teachers and preservice SLPs completed 18 rating scale items designed to assess their attitudes toward collaborating on language interventions in classrooms. Four sets of items were analyzed using Rasch techniques to determine their psychometric properties.

Results

Four unidimensional scales were identified, three with sufficient internal consistency. Preservice teachers and preservice SLPs attitudes were similar toward interprofessional practice, but differed in their perceived skills for classroom child language work.

Conclusions

Curricula designed to foster interprofessional skills can have a similar starting point for both preservice teachers and preservice SLPs, but preservice teachers may require more support to gain confidence in their ability to recognize children's language development.