Measure of Evidence-Based Practice in Occupational Health

Authors

Purpose

The primary purpose of the EBP-OHS is to provide a tailored, context-specific assessment of evidence-based practice readiness and execution within occupational health environments. Historically, occupational health professionals have lacked a dedicated metric to gauge how well they utilize scientific research to inform workplace safety and employee health decisions. Existing instruments were either too broad, focusing solely on academic research skills, or too narrow, targeting only specific professions like nursing.

This scale matters profoundly for both clinical leaders and researchers because it acknowledges that evidence-based practice does not occur in a vacuum. By explicitly measuring organizational support alongside individual practitioner traits, the EBP-OHS highlights the systemic nature of healthcare quality. It empowers managers to identify whether poor evidence implementation is a training issue, a cultural issue, or a resource allocation issue, thereby guiding strategic organizational development.

Construct

The psychological and organizational construct measured by the EBP-OHS is grounded in the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Model of Evidence-Based Healthcare. Specifically, the scale operationalizes two critical phases of this model: 'evidence transfer' and 'evidence implementation'. Evidence transfer refers to the systemic dissemination of knowledge, capturing how an organization educates its staff and integrates new findings into its operational guidelines. Evidence implementation reflects the practical application of this knowledge, capturing how individual practitioners utilize evidence to make concrete decisions regarding patient care and enterprise-level occupational safety.

By synthesizing these theoretical components, the construct is inherently multidimensional. It bridges organizational psychology and clinical competence, positing that an employee's ability and willingness to engage in evidence-based practice (competence and attitudes) are deeply intertwined with the structural and cultural backing provided by their employer (organizational support). This dual-level framework ensures a comprehensive evaluation of the evidence-to-practice pipeline.

Validity

The development of the EBP-OHS involved rigorous validation procedures to ensure the tool accurately captures its intended constructs. Content validity was established through a meticulous expert review process involving 12 specialists in occupational health and evidence-based healthcare. Items were retained only if they achieved an Item-Level Content Validity Index (I-CVI) of 0.78 or higher, ensuring that every question was highly relevant and clearly articulated for the target population.

Construct validity was subsequently evaluated using a large opportunity sample of practitioners. The data demonstrated excellent suitability for structure detection, yielding a Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of 0.90, which indicates superb sampling adequacy. These robust validity indicators confirm that the EBP-OHS is not only theoretically sound but also practically effective at measuring the nuances of evidence-based practice in real-world occupational health settings.

Reliability

Reliability testing of the EBP-OHS demonstrated strong internal consistency across the instrument. The overall scale achieved a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.88. In psychometric evaluation, an alpha value above 0.80 is generally considered indicative of good reliability, meaning the items reliably measure the same underlying concept without excessive redundancy.

This high level of internal consistency suggests that the items within the scale function cohesively. Whether assessing a practitioner's personal attitude toward scientific literature or their perception of managerial support, the responses pattern together in a stable, predictable manner, making the tool highly dependable for both cross-sectional evaluations and longitudinal tracking within occupational health units.

Factor Analysis

To uncover the underlying dimensionality of the questionnaire, the researchers employed an exploratory approach using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The analysis successfully extracted a three-factor structure that accounted for a substantial 60.3% of the total variance in the data. All three retained factors demonstrated eigenvalues of 1.3 or greater, comfortably exceeding the standard Kaiser criterion threshold of 1.0.

The items mapped cleanly onto these three distinct domains, with strong factor loadings ranging from 0.51 to 0.84. Furthermore, the communalities for the items ranged from 0.37 to 0.79, indicating that the extracted factors adequately explained the variance of the individual questions. This clear factor structure aligns perfectly with the theoretical framework, dividing the scale into logical sub-components: organizational support, practitioner competence, and practitioner attitudes.

Subscales

Instrument

Measure of Evidence-Based Practice in Occupational Health Items

Sample

The validation study utilized an opportunity sample of 524 professionals working in Finnish occupational health services. The demographic breakdown included 55% occupational health Nurses (n=289), 32% occupational health physicians (n=166), and 13% experts and supervisors (n=69). Data was collected online between November 2020 and August 2021.