The German interprofessional attitudes scale: translation, cultural adaptation, and validation

Objectives: The implementation of obstetric hybrid simulation and interprofessional collaboration between midwives and anesthetists in labor emergencies fostered the need to evaluate the impact of such a program. The original Interprofessional Attitude Scale (IPAS) assesses interprofessional attitudes among health professional students and includes the 2011 and 2016 Interprofessional Collaborative Practice report competency domains. The purpose of this study was to create a German version of the IPAS (G-IPAS) to use for the education of healthcare students.

Methods: We performed the translation and validation of the IPAS in five steps:
1. translation to German according to the International Society of Pharmaeconomics and Outcome Research guidelines;
2. nine cognitive interviews with healthcare professionals and students;
3. calculation of the Content Validity Index (CVI) by expert opinion;
4. exploratory factor analysis (EFA); and
5. internal consistency by Cronbach’s alpha.
All study participants gave written informed consent and the cantonal ethics committee waived further ethical approval.
Results: The cognitive interviews led to replacement of single-item wording. We retained 27 items for CVI analysis. The averaged overall CVI was 0.79, with 15 items ≥0.89. 185 students (70 medicine, 51 nursing, 48 physiotherapy, and 16 midwifery) contributed with data for the EFA and it produced three subscales. “Teamwork, roles, and respons- ibilities” with factor loadings ≥0.49, “Patient-centeredness” with factor loadings ≥0.31, and “Community-centeredness” with factor loadings ≥0.57. Two items of the total scale were deleted, and four items were redistributed to another subscale. Cronbach’s alpha for the overall G- IPAS scale was 0.87. After deleting and redistributing items in subscales, a new Scale-CVI/Average was calculated and was 0.82.
Conclusions: Based on a rigorous validation process, the G-IPAS provides a reliable tool to assess attitudes towards interprofessional education among different healthcare professions in German-speaking countries.
Keywords: interprofessional attitudes, assessment, psychometric testing, transcultural translation