https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9525-5660
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Abstract
Individuals with disabilities experience numerous health disparities compared to their non-disabled peers and face inequities associated with challenges accessing care, stigma, and bias. Health professionals have the opportunity to address health inequities through improved communication, a primary barrier to receiving quality care; however more training is needed. There are limitations to existing tools to measure the skills or self-efficacy of professionals to communicate with individuals with disabilities, and to assess the effectiveness of training programs. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to measure health professionals’ communication skills and self-efficacy specifically related to working with individuals with disabilities. After a comprehensive review of literature, expert review of proposed scale items, and pilot test, a 19-item survey was administered to 237 healthcare and health and physical education professionals. Construct validity was evaluated by performing an exploratory factor analysis on each subscale and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to measure internal consistency. For the skills subscale, Cronbach’s α = .919 and for the self-efficacy subscale Cronbach’s α = .949 after the removal of one item, resulting in a final 18-item inventory that demonstrates strong validity and reliability.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The participants of this study did not give written consent for their data to be shared publicly, so due to the sensitive nature of the research, supporting data is not available.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2023.2275125