Pragmatic adaptation of implementation research measures for a novel context and multiple professional roles: a factor analysis study

Background Although some advances have been made in recent years, the lack of measures remains a major challenge in the field of implementation research. This results in frequent adaptation of implementation measures for different contexts—including different types of respondents or professional roles—than those for which they were originally developed and validated. The psychometric properties of these adapted measures are often not rigorously evaluated or reported. In this study, we examined the internal consistency, factor structure, and structural invariance of four well-validated measures of inner setting factors across four groups of respondents. The items in these measures were adapted as part of an evaluation of a large-scale organizational change in a rehabilitation hospital, which involved transitioning to a new building and a new model of patient care, facilitated by a significant redesign of patient care and research spaces. Methods Items were tailored for the context and perspective of different respondent groups and shortened for pragmatism. Confirmatory factor analysis was then used to test study hypotheses related to fit, internal consistency, and invariance across groups. Results The survey was administered to approximately 1208 employees; 785 responded (65% response rate) across the roles of clinician, researcher, leader, support staff, or dual clinician and researcher. For each of the four scales, confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated adequate fit that largely replicated the original measure. However, a few items loaded poorly and were removed from the final models. Internal consistencies of the final scales were acceptable. For scales that were administered to multiple professional roles, factor structures were not statistically different across groups, indicating structural invariance. Conclusions The four inner setting measures were robust for use in this new context and across the multiple stakeholder groups surveyed. Shortening these measures did not significantly impair their measurement properties; however, as this study was cross sectional, future studies are required to evaluate the predictive validity and test-retest reliability of these measures. The successful use of adapted measures across contexts, across and between respondent groups, and with fewer items is encouraging, given the current emphasis on designing pragmatic implementation measures.