Inter-professional Education Competency Scale

Authors

Purpose

The primary objective of the IPEC scale is to operationalize and measure the collaborative competencies of healthcare Students before they enter the high-stakes environment of active clinical practice. Historically, the lack of standardized assessment tools has made it difficult for curriculum developers to determine whether inter-professional training modules actually translate into measurable skill acquisition. This instrument fills that critical gap by providing a structured, quantifiable method for evaluating student attitudes and perceived capabilities regarding cross-disciplinary teamwork.

For researchers and clinical educators, having access to a validated version of this scale allows for evidence-based curriculum refinement and the ability to benchmark student progress against established competency standards. As healthcare systems globally shift toward integrated care models to manage complex chronic diseases, tools like the IPEC scale are indispensable for ensuring that the next generation of practitioners is adequately prepared for Collaborative practice.

Construct

Inter-professional competency is conceptualized as a multidimensional psychological and behavioral construct that encompasses the cognitive, affective, and practical skills necessary for effective healthcare collaboration. The theoretical framework underlying the IPEC scale divides this overarching construct into four distinct but highly interrelated domains. The first domain, values and ethics, captures the foundational respect for patient privacy and the diverse expertise of colleagues. The second, roles and responsibilities, assesses a student's understanding of their own professional boundaries as well as those of other team members.

The third dimension focuses on inter-professional communication, measuring the ability to share information clearly, avoid exclusionary jargon, and resolve conflicts constructively. Finally, the team-based care and teamwork domain evaluates the practical application of these skills in shared decision-making and leadership contexts. Together, these dimensions form a comprehensive profile of a practitioner's collaborative readiness, reflecting both their internal attitudes and their outward behavioral intentions.

Validity

The validation process for this instrument utilized a rigorous, multi-tiered approach to ensure both content and construct integrity. Initially, an expert panel of medical educators evaluated the translated items, yielding a strong overall Content Validity Index of 0.87, which indicates excellent agreement that the items accurately reflect the target construct. To establish construct validity, researchers employed both exploratory and confirmatory techniques.

The confirmatory Factor analysis demonstrated an exceptionally strong fit for the four-factor model, with a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) of 0.026, well below the standard threshold of 0.08 for acceptable fit. Furthermore, the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) reached 0.92, and the Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) was 0.95, providing compelling evidence that the theoretical four-dimensional structure holds up empirically in this new cultural context. Convergent validity was also supported, with Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values ranging from 0.64 to 0.76 across the subscales, confirming that the items within each factor are highly related to one another.

Reliability

In psychometric evaluation, reliability ensures that an instrument measures the target construct consistently across time and individuals. For the Persian adaptation of the IPEC scale, the overall internal consistency was robust, demonstrated by a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.84. This value sits comfortably within the optimal range for psychological measures, indicating that the items are highly correlated and reliably capture the underlying competency construct without excessive redundancy.

Additionally, the composite reliability (CR) scores for the individual subscales were excellent, ranging from 0.85 to 0.91. These metrics assure researchers and educators that the scale will yield stable, dependable scores when used to evaluate the collaborative competencies of medical and Nursing Students. High composite reliability further confirms that the variance captured by the construct is significantly greater than the variance attributed to measurement error.

Factor Analysis

The structural evaluation of the scale began with an Exploratory Factor analysis (EFA) to uncover the natural grouping of items without imposing a preconceived model. The sampling adequacy was confirmed by a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index of 0.84, indicating the data was highly suitable for dimension reduction. The EFA successfully extracted four distinct factors that collectively accounted for approximately 52% of the total variance in student responses. Crucially, every item demonstrated strong primary factor loadings exceeding 0.70, meaning no items had to be discarded due to poor performance.

Following this exploratory phase, a Confirmatory Factor analysis (CFA) using Partial Least Squares was applied to test the hypothesized four-factor structure. The resulting fit indices confirmed that the items mapped perfectly onto their respective theoretical domains. The Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI) of 0.95 and a relative chi-square of 2.38 further solidified the structural validity of the instrument, proving that the four-factor model is both statistically sound and theoretically meaningful.

Subscales

Instrument

Inter-professional Education Competency Scale Items

Sample

The study included 211 Students from the Iran University of Medical Sciences, comprising 136 medical students (64.5%) and 75 Nursing Students (35.5%). The mean age was approximately 22 years. Additionally, an expert panel of 11 specialists in medical and clinical education participated in the content validity phase.

Permissions & Test Year

The scale was translated into Persian with the consent of the original researcher.

Test Year: 2024