| The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument that measured the concept Occupational Intimacy. This instrument explored the hypothesized components of Occupational Intimacy: nurturing environment, love of work and meaningful work.;A convenience sample of 380 physicians who actively practiced in the state of Colorado participated in this study. Development and testing of the concept Occupational Intimacy provided evidence to support the validity and reliability of the instrument. The content validity of the Occupational Intimacy instrument was assessed by Boverie and Kroth, two theorists who developed the concept of Occupational Intimacy. The results of the expert review produced a 37 item Occupational Intimacy instrument.;A principal components analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to assess the underlying structure for the 37 items of the Occupational Intimacy instrument. The three factor solution explained 54% of the cumulative variance. The alpha coefficients ranged from .86-.94 on each of the final subscales: love of work, meaningful work and nurturing environment. The final instrument had 36 total items to measure the concept of Occupational Intimacy.;The mean scores for meaningful work, love of work, and nurturing environment were compared by gender, type of specialty, and age. Nine one-way ANOVA's were completed to determine if there were statistically significant relationships between the independent variables of age, gender and specialty, and the three dependent variables: love of work, meaningful work, and nurturing environment.;There were no main effects for age or gender on the three components: meaningful work, love of work, and nurturing environment. There were no main effects for specialty on love of work and nurturing environment. However, there was a difference between the medicine physicians and "others" on how meaningful they perceived their job. The medicine physicians, which include internal medicine, neurology, family practice, cardiology, nephrology, gastroenterology, and oncology perceived their job was more meaningful than the subgroup "others" which included: obstetrics and gynecology, dermatology, allergy, ophthalmology, optometry, podiatry, psychiatry, emergency medicine, rehabilitation, pain, pediatrics, ears, nose and throat, infectious disease, and radiology. Broad generalizations are difficult to make as this study utilized results from one specific geographic location. Replication studies are encouraged to continue to validate the Occupational Intimacy concept. |
