THE HEALTH WORKERS ATTITUDE INVENTORY: A TOOL FOR ASSESSING WORKER/MANAGEMENT RELATIONS IN HEALTH CARE FACILITIES

The complex social and organizational environment within a health care institution creates numerous problems for managers as they strive to maintain a positive climate. The final product of this project was a response to these problems and was built upon the premise that valid and reliable data reflecting workers' attitudes could be a tool for increasing the probability of achieving a positive organizational climate.; The analysis within the project included a series of tests to design questions, identify the underlying dimensions of worker/management relations, and determine the validity and reliability of the initial analysis. The product of this testing sequence was the Health Workers Attitude Inventory, an attitude survey to assess worker/management relations in health care institutions. Scales were then developed to measure the relative degree of attitudinal harmony or discord for specific behavioral dimensions of worker/management relations within and among organizations.; Survey responses from the sample of 460 non-supervisory workers in 15 health care institutions were subjected to an R-type, exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal rotation. This analysis identified 15 underlying dimensions and 110 statistically and conceptually appropriate items. The subsequent action produced the information to develop a standard scoring system for each of the dimensions, which would provide the means for an institution and its various components to compute a relative score or standing for each of the 15 dimensions. These standard scores supply information for decision making in the personnel and human resource functions of the institution.; The responses were also analyzed by the demographic characteristics of age, race, sex, shift, job classification, and education and the institutional characteristics of bed capacity, number of full-time personnel, and classification as a hospital or nursing home. The examination of demographic characteristics and the analysis of institutional characteristics were conducted as a measure to establish the validity of the instrument.