Validity and Reliability of a Tool Measuring Long-Term Employment Factors among Dental Hygienists / 치위생과학회지

Dental hygienists are important members of any dental clinic. They are recognized as reflecting the dental clinic's image because they spend a lot of time with patients. The longer the dental hygienist is employed, the better the relationship with the patients and the medical service provided. The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale to measure factors of long-term employment among dental hygienists. The basic questions were constructed by analyzing tools used to measure job embeddedness and satisfaction. Forty-one questions were developed that measured organizational fit (13), interpersonal relationships (8), job satisfaction (7), duty satisfaction (6), recognition (4), and self-esteem (3). A questionnaire survey was conducted, and the responses from 297 dental hygienists in dental clinics, after the exclusion of 20 incomplete surveys, were used for the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. As revealed by exploratory factor analysis, long-term employment intention was composed of 7 factors consisting of 29 items after the exclusion of 12. The subsequent confirmatory factor analysis revealed 4 factors (“organizational fit,”“professional identity,”“job connectivity,” and “interpersonal relationship”) consisting of 16 items, after the exclusion of 13. Cronbach's α were 0806, 0.836, 0.700, and 0.684 for the four factors. This study is meaningful in that it developed a long-term employment factor measurement tool that can be applied to domestic dental hygienists. Future studies will need to focus more on professional identity and job outcomes. The results of this study and future related ones could be used to improve dental hygienist's continuous service.

Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of Job Embeddedness for Measurement Tool of Dental Hygienist / 치위생과학회지

The purpose of this study was to investigate a reliability and validity of the Korean version for measuring tool the job embeddedness of dental hygienists. The survey was modified and revised to fit into Korean culture. A survey was conducted with 274 dental hygienists in dental clinics. The data was used for the analysis of the study, using PASW Statistics 18.0 and IBM SPSS AMOS 7.0. The factor analysis showed that the job embeddedness of the dental hygienists was composed of three elements, namely ‘organization fit’, ‘job connectivity’, and ‘personnel relationships’. The validity of the model examined by a confirmatory factor analysis satisfied most of the relevant requirements. All of the factors had the conceptual reliability and variant extracted index above the minimum requirements, ensuring reliability and concentrated validity. The Cronbach’s alpha shows a good reliability. In conclusion, it was proven that dental hygienist’s job embeddedness measurement tool has high validity and reliability. Further, this study could be used to improve dental hygienist’s long term working, and the growth stage of dental clinic.