Development and validation of a short version of the Partnership Self-Assessment Tool (PSAT) among professionals in Dutch disease-management partnerships

BACKGROUND: The extent to which partnership synergy is created within quality improvement programmes in the Netherlands is unknown. In this article, we describe the psychometric testing of the Partnership Self-Assessment Tool (PSAT) among professionals in twenty-two disease-management partnerships participating in quality improvement projects focused on chronic care in the Netherlands. Our objectives are to validate the PSAT in the Netherlands and to reduce the number of items of the original PSAT while maintaining validity and reliability. METHODS: The Dutch version of the PSAT was tested in twenty-two disease-management partnerships with 218 professionals. We tested the instrument by means of structural equation modelling, and examined its validity and reliability. RESULTS: After eliminating 14 items, the confirmatory factor analyses revealed good indices of fit with the resulting 15-item PSAT-Short version (PSAT-S). Internal consistency as represented by Cronbach's alpha ranged from acceptable (0.75) for the 'efficiency' subscale to excellent for the 'leadership' subscale (0.87). Convergent validity was provided with high correlations of the partnership dimensions and partnership synergy (ranged from 0.512 to 0.609) and high correlations with chronic illness care (ranged from 0.447 to 0.329). CONCLUSION: The psychometric properties and convergent validity of the PSAT-S were satisfactory rendering it a valid and reliable instrument for assessing partnership synergy and its dimensions of partnership functioning.