Development of a survey instrument to measure connectivity to evaluate national public health preparedness and response performance.

OBJECTIVE

Survey instruments for evaluating public health preparedness have focused on measuring the structure and capacity of local, state, and federal agencies, rather than linkages among structure, process, and outcomes. To focus evaluation on the latter, we evaluated the linkages among individuals, organizations, and systems using the construct of "connectivity" and developed a measurement instrument.

METHODS

Results from focus groups of emergency preparedness first responders generated 62 items used in the development sample of 187 respondents. Item reduction and factors analyses were conducted to confirm the scale's components.

RESULTS

The 62 items were reduced to 28. Five scales explained 70% of the total variance (number of items, percent variance explained, Cronbach's alpha) including connectivity with the system (8, 45%, 0.94), coworkers (7, 7%, 0.91), organization (7, 12%, 0.93), and perceptions (6, 6%, 0.90). Discriminant validity was found to be consistent with the factor structure.

CONCLUSION

We developed a Connectivity Measurement Tool for the public health workforce consisting of a 34-item questionnaire found to be a reliable measure of connectivity with preliminary evidence of construct validity.