The internal consistency of a tool to assess the training needs of healthcare assistants in state hospitals of Sri Lanka

Healthcare Management

Introduction: Two tailor-made tools were developed to assess the training needs of HCAs working in clinical and office settings of state hospitals in Sri Lanka. The items of the tools were measured on an interval scale. The average mean scores of tools were computed and served as threshold values for prioritizing the training needs. Such an approach necessitates the assessment of the internal consistency of tools to assume the items are strongly correlated. Objective: The study aimed to assess the internal consistency of tools in identifying the training needs of healthcare assistants working in clinical and office settings of state hospitals in Sri Lanka. Method: Tools were piloted among the middle-level managers at NHSL in July 2023. The survey results were scrutinized by statistical tests for internal consistency (reliability). Cronbach’s alpha correlation coefficient testing was the mainstay of analysis with the support of Principal Component Analysis, intraclass correlation coefficient, and split-half reliability testing. Results: The Cronbach’s Alpha correlation coefficients with 95% CIs were 0.963 (0.945 - 0.976)) and 0.945 (0.913 - 0.969) respectively for clinical and office setting tools. The split-half reliability tests done on office and clinical setting tools showed Spearman-Brown coefficients of 0.885 and 0.930 respectively. Conclusion: Both tools were found stable (reliable) to measure the training needs of HCAs working in state hospitals of Sri Lanka. Recommendation: The developed tools could be used in any hospital under the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.