Allied Health Faculty Publications

Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Intention to Stay in Academia for Physician Assistant Faculty

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2015

Journal Title

Journal of Physician Assistant Education

ISSN

1941-9430

Volume

26

Issue

1

First Page

10

Last Page

18

DOI

10.1097/JPA.0000000000000012

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this research was to construct and validate a measure of "intention to stay in academia" for physician assistant faculty members. Methods The 70-item instrument was developed through a literature review, a qualitative investigation of how experienced physician assistant faculty members conceptualized "intention to stay in academia," and an expert review of survey items. The items were pilot tested on a convenience sample of 53 faculty members from 9 physician assistant programs; the revised survey was then administered to all 1002 physician assistant program faculty members in the United States with physician assistant credentials. Rasch analyses were conducted to examine psychometric properties of the measure and collect evidence of validity. Results The national survey had a 48% response rate, and participants were representative of all physician assistant faculty members. Although the overall instrument demonstrated acceptable construct coverage, good reliability estimates, and adequate fit statistics for the majority of the items, only 36.5% of the variance in the data could be explained by the measure. A subset of 19 items relating to a supportive academic environment ("Supportive Environment" scale) was extracted and met the expectations of the Rasch model. Conclusions The Supportive Environment scale produced a meaningful progression of indicators of "intention to stay in academia" for physician assistant faculty members and demonstrated characteristics of a linear measure. Administrators can make valid inferences regarding physician assistant faculty intention to stay from the subscale analysis.

Keywords

Physician Assistants, faculty attitudes. personnel retention

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