Informational role self-efficacy: a validation in interprofessional collaboration contexts involving healthcare service and project teams

BACKGROUND: Healthcare professionals perform knowledge-intensive work in very specialized disciplines. Across the professional divide, collaboration becomes increasingly difficult. For effective teamwork and collaboration to occur, it is considered necessary for individuals to believe in their ability to draw on their expertise and provide what others need to perform their job well. To date, however, no instruments exist to measure such a construct. METHODS: A two-study design is used to test the psychometric properties, factor structure and incremental validity of a five-item questionnaire measuring informational role self-efficacy. RESULTS: Based on parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis, Study 1 shows a robust and reliable one-dimensional construct. Study 2 cross-validates this factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 also shows that informational role self-efficacy predicts proactive teamwork behaviors over and above goal similarity, interdependence, coordination and intra-team trust. CONCLUSIONS: The instrument can be used in research to assess an individual’s capability beliefs in communicating his/her informational characteristics that are pertinent to the task performance of others. The construct is also shown to have value in team-building exercises. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1382-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.