Design and Validation of Professionalism Questionnaire in the Management of Iranian Healthcare Organizations

Professionalism is a new paradigm in postmodernism public management that helps develop a management plan for complex organizational problems. It also is the main variable in healthcare organizations for the improvement of productivity. Therefore, this research was conducted for the measurement and evaluation of professionalism and its components among healthcare organization managers of Tehran University of Medical Sciences hospitals by a valid and reliable local tool in Iran.

This cross-sectional analytical study was conducted on 150 middle and senior managers selected by the census sampling method. The research tool was a researcher-made professionalism questionnaire with three main components, including specialization, work ethics, and organizational commitment which consisted of 30 items. A five-phase process was conducted for the development of this questionnaire in terms of face, content, structural validity with factor analysis, divergent, convergent validity using average variance extracted, Kaiser-Meyer-OLKIN, and Bartlett method, and finally Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability coefficient. Moreover, descriptive statistics explanatory factor analysis and Pearson correlation test were performed in SPSS software.

The content validity index and content validity ratio of the professionalism questionnaire were 0.72 and 0.80, respectively. The values of average variance extracted for the professionalism questionnaire and its components were greater than 0.5. Therefore, convergent validity and also divergent validity of professionalism questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient. Moreover, composite reliability was used to investigate the intrinsic homogeneity of the measurement model in the PLS method that was acceptable for all research structures.

This study advanced research on development of new professionalism questionnaire and its components among the managers of healthcare organizations. The results of this research suggested that the healthcare organization managers should be familiar with the new approach for professionalism and aimed to facilitate an understanding of the changing character of professional work in these organizations.