| There is a renewed interest in teamness among interprofessional healthcare team members, specifically in primary care. Teamness is defined as a state of perceiving that the team in which an individual is a member is a highly effective team and, as such, is an emergent state of and predictive of effective teamwork. Effective teamwork among interprofessional healthcare team members has improved patient, clinician, and organizational outcomes. A variety of models have been proffered to depict relationships between constructs purported as reflecting essential behaviors, processes, and resultant states of effective interprofessional teamwork in healthcare, yet there is no consensus among scientist-practitioners on a model to measure strengths and opportunities for development of such teams. There are many tools used to measure the constructs in these models; however, most of them lack psychometric evidence of reliability and validity. Additionally, little is known about the construct of teamness. The Assessment for Collaborative Environments (ACE-15) is a tool recently developed by Tilden, Eckstrom, and Deickmann (2016) that reportedly measures a single-factor construct of teamness. This study further assessed the construct of teamness by describing its theoretical framework. In addition, the ability of ACE-15 items to discriminate between participant levels of teamness and its ability to show item cohesion and variability were assessed. The ACE-15 was also compared with an experimental item set, referred to as the Alternative Perceptions of Teamness Scale (APTS-20), meant to measure known elements of effective interprofessional teamwork potentially not captured with the ACE-15 items. Item analysis reduced the APTS-20 by five items, and the resultant scale was called the APTS-15, which was further compared with the ACE-15. Principal Axis Factor analysis showed a single-factor model of teamness using the APTS-15. Next, Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed that data from this study did not fit the one-factor model described in the ACE-15's initial validation study. Data from this study did not fit a five-factor or two-factor model either. Therefore, this study re-assessed the factorial structure of the ACE-15 using exploratory factor analysis, which suggested a three-factor model. Furthermore, this study assessed the reliability (internal consistency) and many sources of validity (e.g., content, convergent, and discriminant) of the ACE-15 using estimation statistics, such as effect sizes and confidence intervals, from a sample of healthcare clinicians, most of whom worked in primary care settings in southern California (N = 231). Groups were compared using ANOVA techniques. Post hoc analyses explored the relationship between leadership and teamness. In addition, a Harman's Test showed that there was no common method bias. Lastly, the four teamness-related surveys used in this study were combined and post hoc exploratory factor analyses were conducted to determine if they were measuring the same factor. Results showed that each of the instruments used in this study measured highly similar but distinct factors. Recommendations for future research using multilevel confirmatory factor analyses are discussed. |
