Measuring mental health action competencies in school teachers: internal and external validity evidence.

Introduction: Mental health literacy is receiving increasing research attention due to growing concerns for mental health globally. Among children, teachers have recently been recognized as playing a vital role in the recognition and reporting of potential mental health issues. Methods: A nationally sampled cross-section of teachers was surveyed to examine the discriminant validity of the mental health literacy measure across levels of teaching. A survey collected a total of n = 369 teacher responses in Switzerland (Kindergarten = 76, Primary = 210, Secondary = 83). Item response theory (IRT) analyses were conducted. Results: Inspection of psychometric properties indicated removal of two weak performing items. The 15-item measure exhibited a significant mean difference, such that class-responsibility function scored higher (M = 2.86, SD = .45) than non-responsible function (M = 2.68, SD = .45) teachers [t(309) = -2.20, p = .01]. It also exhibited a significant mean difference, such that more subjective experienced scored higher (M = 2.86, SD = .45) than less subjective experienced (M = 2.68, SD = .45) teachers [t(210) = -8.66, p < .01]. Discussion: Hypotheses regarding age and role tenure were in the expected direction, but non-significant. The MHL measure for teachers demonstrated sound measurement properties supporting usage across teaching levels.

German translation and validation of the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale.

We identified evidence from item response theory (IRT) to examine a German translation of the Interprofessional Facilitation Scale (IPFS). The IPFS was administered to n = 130 mixed-health profession participants in a post-interprofessional education practicum questionnaire. We used IRT analyses to examine the following three aspects of the IPFS: (a) general factor strength, (b) subscale usability, and (c) item bias. First, findings indicate a strong, general factor underlying the IPFS that supports unidimensional interpretations. Second, findings supported IPFS overall reliability, but failed to support subscale reliabilities. Third, item bias assessment using a comparator-French sample (n = 89) indicated insubstantial differences across German and French samples. Taken together, we find sufficient evidence to support the IPFS-German translation's application in IPE contexts and unidimensional interpretations. Subscores are not advisable for interpretation, and future researchers should aim to further inspect potential item bias.

A Swiss digital Delphi study on patient-reported outcomes.

AIMS OF THE STUDY: Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) indicators are patient-reported outcomes (PROs). PROs are defined as any report of the status of a patient's health condition or health behaviour that comes directly from the patient, without interpretation of the patient's response by a clinician or anyone else. Despite Swiss national bodies (FOPH, FMH) recognising the potential of PRO measures (PROMs) for improving the health system, no consensus has yet emerged regarding a generic PROM framework or specific domains for practical uptake. The aim of the present digital Delphi study was to generate a consensual Swiss expert opinion on a generic PROM framework, measurement domains and items from a validated instrument (PROMIS [Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System]) as well as on the role and implementation of PROs in the Swiss healthcare system via PRO consensus statements. METHODS: A 4-round digital Delphi study was conducted among Swiss PRO stakeholders. A total of n = 21 Swiss PROM stakeholders completed round 1 surveys on the PROM framework. During the stakeholder meeting, n = 11 stakeholders completed round 2 and round 3 surveys pertaining to measurement domains and items, respectively. In-meeting key questions and discussion items were extracted, consolidated into statements and subjected to consensus voting in a round 4, post-meeting survey. Consensus was defined as ≥70% agreement. RESULTS: Pre-meeting, agreement was reached for the tripartite framework of physical, mental and social health (95-100%). During the meeting, agreement was reached on all seven measurement domains of a generic PROM (PROMIS-29), ranging from 80% (Anxiety, Sleep Disturbance) to 100% (Pain Interference, Depression, Ability to Participate in Social Roles). Consensus was also reached for all PROMIS-29 items, with average domain consensus ranging from 83% (Sleep Disturbance, Ability to Participate in Social Roles) to 100% (Depression). Finally, four post-meeting consensus statements regarding PROs in Switzerland reached agreement. CONCLUSIONS: A Delphi method can help identify areas of need regarding PROMs in Switzerland. The current study identified a generic PROM as a missing quality indicator for the Swiss national health system's value. A pre-meeting informational briefing, expert presentations and moderation supported three voting rounds to help identify PROMIS-29 as a PROM framework (round 1), measurement domains (round 2) and items (round 3) as a basis for further validation research. The empirical agreement among diverse stakeholders supports broad consensus towards preliminary feasibility of integrating generic PROMs into the Swiss health system based on content relevance.

Interprofessional educators' competencies, assessment, and training - IPEcat: protocol of a global consensus study.

Contemporary practice in interprofessional education (IPE) has evolved predominantly focusing on the competencies for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) that learners must acquire. Competencies that educators need to successfully deliver IPC have been overlooked. This lack of attention is further confounded by a field replete with inconsistent terminology and standards and no global consensus on the core competencies needed for IPE facilitation. There are no globally accepted tools to assess interprofessional educators' competencies nor are there established training programmes that might be used as the basis for a collective global approach to these issues. The International Working Group for Interprofessional Educators Competencies, Assessment, and Training (IWG_IPEcat) seeks to address this gap using a sequential mixed-method approach, to deliver globally developed, empirically derived tools to foster IPE educator competencies. This article presents the protocol of the research project.

Student views of interprofessional education facilitator competencies: A cross-sectional study.

Research attention has been paid to providing evidence on undergraduate/pre-licensure health sciences students' interprofessional education competency requirements, placements, and attainment. Although interprofessional facilitator training has been identified as critical to interprofessional learner outcomes, scant research has examined student perceptions of valued facilitator competencies. This short report investigates students' views of important attributes for interprofessional facilitation using a cross-sectional observation-survey design. A survey was conducted in a pre-licensure sample of n = 343 students (response rate 68%) from four health professions (nursing, midwifery, physical therapy, and occupational therapy). After completing a semester-long interprofessional education course, students completed a survey vis-à-vis rating the importance of interprofessional facilitator competency with regard to 25 abilities, 12 teacher profiles, and 10 characteristics. Taken together, results indicate the need for a multifaceted view of interprofessional facilitator competencies. Our findings will inform training targeted to specific facilitator competencies, as needed for optimizing the delivery of interprofessional education.

Is Animal-Assisted Therapy for Minimally Conscious State Beneficial? A Case Study.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this single case study was to qualitatively investigate the effects of animal-assisted therapy in a patient in a minimally conscious state. METHOD: We present a 28-year-old female patient in a minimally conscious state following polytrauma after a sports accident leading to cerebral fat embolism causing multiple CNS ischemic lesions. She received eight animal-assisted therapy sessions and eight paralleled control therapy sessions over 4 weeks. We investigated the reactions of the patient during these sessions via qualitative behavior analysis. RESULTS: The patient showed a broader variability and higher quality of behavior during animal-assisted therapy compared to control therapy sessions. CONCLUSION: The observed behavioral changes showed higher arousal and increased awareness in the presence of an animal. The presented case supports the assumption that animal-assisted therapy can be a beneficial treatment approach for patients in a minimally conscious state.

Electronic Health Literacy in Swiss-German Parents: Cross-Sectional Study of eHealth Literacy Scale Unidimensionality.

BACKGROUND: Parents often use digital media to search for information related to their children's health. As the quantity and quality of digital sources meant specifically for parents expand, parents' digital health literacy is increasingly important to process the information they retrieve. One of the earliest developed and widely used instruments to assess digital health literacy is the self-reported eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS). However, the eHEALS has not been psychometrically validated in a sample of parents. Given the inconsistency of the eHEALS underlying factor structure across previous reports, it is particularly important for validation to occur. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to determine the factor structure of the German eHEALS measure in a sample of parents by adopting classic and modern psychometric approaches. In particular, this study sought to identify the eHEALS validity as a unidimensional index as well as the viability for potential subscales. METHODS: A cross-sectional design was used across two purposive sampling frames: online and paper administrations. Responses were collected between January 2018 and May 2018 from 703 Swiss-German parents. In addition to determining the sampling characteristics, we conducted exploratory factor analysis of the eHEALS by considering its ordinal structure using polychoric correlations. This analysis was performed separately for online-based and paper-based responses to examine the general factor strength of the eHEALS as a unidimensional index. Furthermore, item response theory (IRT) analyses were conducted by fitting eHEALS to a bifactor model to further inspect its unidimensionality and subscale viability. RESULTS: Parents in both samples were predominantly mothers (622/703, 88.5%), highly educated (538/703, 76.9%), of Swiss nationality (489/703, 71.8%), and living with a partner (692/703, 98.4%). Factor analyses of the eHEALS indicated the presence of a strong general factor across both paper and online samples, and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test indicated that the eHEALS total sum score was not significantly different between the paper and online samples (P=.12). Finally, the IRT analyses indicated negligible multidimensionality, insufficient subscale reliability after accounting for the eHEALS general factor, and a reduced subset of items that could serve as a unidimensional index of the eHEALS across the paper and online samples. CONCLUSIONS: The German eHEALS evidenced good psychometric properties in a parent-specific study sample. Factor analyses indicated a strong general factor across purposively distinct sample frames (online and paper). IRT analyses validated the eHEALS as a unidimensional index while failing to find support for subscale usage.

Interprofessional simulation training's impact on process and outcome team efficacy beliefs over time.

Introduction: Recent findings suggest that process and outcome-based efficacy beliefs are factorially distinct with differential effects for team performance. This study extends this work by examining process and outcome efficacy (TPE, TOE) of interprofessional (IP) care teams over time. Methods: A within-team, repeated measures design with survey methodology was implemented in a sample of prelicensure IP care teams performing over three consecutive clinical simulation scenarios. TPE and TOE were assessed before and after each performance episode. Results: Initial baseline results replicated the discriminant validity for TPE and TOE separate factors. Further findings from multilevel modelling indicated significant time effects for TPE convergence, but not TOE convergence. However, a cross-level interaction effect of 'TOE(Start-Mean)×Time' strengthened TOE convergence over time. A final follow-up analysis of team agreement's substantive impact was conducted using independent faculty-observer ratings of teams' final simulation. Conclusion: Independent sample t-tests of high/low-agreement teams indicated support for agreement's substantive impact, such that high-agreement teams were rated as significantly better performers than low-agreement teams during the final simulation training. We discuss the substantive merit of methodological within-team agreement as an indicator of team functionality within IP and greater healthcare-simulation trainings at-large.

Mindfulness fostering of interprofessional simulation training for collaborative practice.

Introduction The setting demands imposed by performing in new, interdisciplinary cultures is common for modern healthcare workers. Both health science students and evidence-based workers are required to operate in professional cultures that differ from their own. As health organisations have placed increasing value on mindfulness for improving performance outcomes, so too have educational administrators embraced common, mindful competencies for improving training for improved patient outcomes. The training of future clinicians for diversified care. teams and patient populations has become known as interprofessional education (IPE). Although the goals for IPE suggest that individual differences in trait mindfulness may serve an important determinant for training effectiveness, it has gone unstudied in extant simulation training research. MethodsTo fill this gap, in this paper, we examine trait mindfulness' predictive power for training outcomes across two IPE cohort samples using two, prospective observational designs. Results Study 1's Findings supported trait mindfulness' prediction of perceived teamwork behaviours in training simulations between medical and nursing students (n=136). In study 2's expanded sample to five health professions (n=232), findings extended trait mindfulness' prediction of team efficacy and skill transfer, assessed 1 month after training. Conclusion A final, follow-up assessment 16 months later extended mindfulness' predictive validity to knowledge retention and teamwork attitudes. We discuss the theoretical and practical implication of our findings for advancing mindfulness research and IPE effectiveness assessment.

Psychological Antecedents of Retirement Planning: A Systematic Review.

As workforce aging continues through the next decade, the number of persons who will retire from long-held jobs and careers will increase. In recent years, researchers across disciplines of psychology have focused attention on the impact of the retirement process on post-retirement adjustment and well-being. The objective of the current review is twofold. The first goal is to review the literature on retirement planning with attention to past conceptualizations and current theoretical specifications. Second, empirical work investigating the psychological antecedents of retirement planning is reviewed. The primary conclusion reached from this review is that, conceptually, retirement planning continues to be poorly delineated and, thereby, narrowly investigated. Empirically, cognitive antecedents of retirement planning continue to figure prominently in both workplace and retirement researches. The boundary conditions of retirement planning, as well as alternative mechanisms for adult wellbeing, are discussed. Specifically, retirement planning's meaning amidst increasing job mobility and longer life expectancies are identified as two complementary areas for future empirical integration of work-retirement research domains.

Chop and Change: A Commentary and Demonstration of Classical vs. Modern Measurement Models for Interpreting Latent-Stability of Occupational-Future Time Perspective.

This commentary article was initially motivated by an empirical paper published in the journal of Work, Aging, and Retirement that reported support for stability (non-decreasing) future time perspectives (FTP) over two repeated-measurements. That is, empirical evidence supporting the temporal stability of an adapted measure (occupational-FTP [O-FTP]) serves as guiding framework for demonstrating limitations of classical test theory (CTT) and modern psychometrics' (IRT) enabling extension for stronger substantive inferences from response data. The focal authors' quantitative attention to study design and statistical analysis is commendable. In this commentary, I aim to complement their efforts from a measurement perspective. This is accomplished through four sections. In the first section, I summarize some well-known limitations to CTT measurement models for assessing change. Then, I briefly introduce item response theory (IRT) as an alternative test theory. In the second section, Chop, I review the empirical evidence for FTP and O-FTP's latent-factor structure. Then, I bring evidence from modern psychometric methods to bear on O-FTP, specifically, a model-comparisons approach was adopted for comparing relative fit of 1-factor, 2-factor, and bifactor solutions in cross-sectional data (N = 511). Findings supported retention of the bifactor solution. In the third section, Change, I extend the bifactor model to two-wave FTP data over approximately 2 years (N = 620) as an instructive application for assessing temporal stability. The fourth section concludes with a brief discussion of substantive implications and meaningful interpretation of (O)-FTP scores over time.

Empirical Tryout of a New Statistic for Detecting Temporally Inconsistent Responders.

Statistical screening of self-report data is often advised to support the quality of analyzed responses - For example, reduction of insufficient effort responding (IER). One recently introduced index based on Mahalanobis's D for detecting outliers in cross-sectional designs replaces centered scores with difference scores between repeated-measure items: Termed person temporal consistency (D2ptc). Although the adapted D2ptc index demonstrated usefulness in simulation datasets, it has not been applied to empirical data. The current study addresses D2ptc's low uptake by critically appraising its performance across three empirical applications. Independent samples were selected to represent a range of scenarios commonly encountered by organizational researchers. First, in Sample 1, a repeat-measure of future time perspective (FTP) inexperienced working adults (age >40-years; n = 620) indicated that temporal inconsistency was significantly related to respondent age and item reverse-scoring. Second, in repeat-measure of team efficacy aggregations, D2ptc successfully detected team-level inconsistency across repeat-performance cycles. Thirdly, the usefulness of the D2ptc was examined in an experimental study dataset of subjective life expectancy indicated significantly more stable responding in experimental conditions compared to controls. The empirical findings support D2ptc's flexible and useful application to distinct study designs. Discussion centers on current limitations and further extensions that may be of value to psychologists screening self-report data for strengthening response quality and meaningfulness of inferences from repeated-measures self-reports. Taken together, the findings support the usefulness of the newly devised statistic for detecting IER and other extreme response patterns.

Assessment of the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS): An item response theory analysis.

This short report aims to bring evidence from modern psychometric methods to bear on a popularly deployed questionnaire in interprofessional education (IPE) assessment. Specifically, three interrelated problems raised against the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) are examined in a study with 280 medical and nursing student participants. Firstly, findings support RIPLS overall reliability, but fail to support subscale reliabilities. Secondly, findings indicate a strong, general factor underlying the RIPLS that supports unidimensional interpretations. Thirdly, findings support the RIPLS potential sensitivity to changes with appropriate lower ranges for our pre-training student sample. Recommendations for refinement to the RIPLS include: use of more appropriate reliability indices; factor generalizability; and a subset of items. More generally, refinement is possible, whereas RIPLS disuse or continued misuse with problematic scales is likely to hinder progress in the field of IPE.

Investigating predictive power of agency and communion for interprofessional learner outcomes: A before-after study.

As interprofessional education (IPE) continues to be instituted, much attention has been paid to training-intervention effectiveness. Less attention has been paid to the selection side of the IPE model; however, efficient delivery is necessary to sustain the development of IPE. This short report investigates the "two big social cognitions" (agency and communion) as individual-difference predictors of attitude change and knowledge acquisition. A 3-week before-after observational design with survey methodology was conducted in a pre-licensure IPE setting (n = 82). Results indicated significant interactions of agency and communion in predicting learner outcomes. Our findings should stimulate future IPE researchers to identify additional, selection-relevant design factors (e.g., individual differences) that may enhance comparative-effectiveness of IPE.

An Experimental Evaluation of Competing Age-Predictions of Future Time Perspective between Workplace and Retirement Domains.

Future time perspective (FTP) is defined as "perceptions of the future as being limited or open-ended" (Lang and Carstensen, 2002; p. 125). The construct figures prominently in both workplace and retirement domains, but the age-predictions are competing: Workplace research predicts decreasing FTP age-change, in contrast, retirement scholars predict increasing FTP age-change. For the first time, these competing predictions are pitted in an experimental manipulation of subjective life expectancy (SLE). A sample of N = 207 older adults (age 45-60) working full-time (>30-h/week) were randomly assigned to SLE questions framed as either 'Live-to' or 'Die-by' to evaluate competing predictions for FTP. Results indicate general support for decreasing age-change in FTP, indicated by independent-sample t-tests showing lower FTP in the 'Die-by' framing condition. Further general-linear model analyses were conducted to test for interaction effects of retirement planning with experimental framings on FTP and intended retirement; While retirement planning buffered FTP's decrease, simple-effects also revealed that retirement planning increased intentions for sooner retirement, but lack of planning increased intentions for later retirement. Discussion centers on practical implications of our findings and consequences validity evidence in future empirical research of FTP in both workplace and retirement domains.