Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the teamwork climate scale

OBJECTIVE: To adapt and validate the Team Climate Inventory scale, of teamwork climate measurement, for the Portuguese language, in the context of primary health care in Brazil. METHODS: Methodological study with quantitative approach of cross-cultural adaptation (translation, back-translation, synthesis, expert committee, and pretest) and validation with 497 employees from 72 teams of the Family Health Strategy in the city of Campinas, SP, Southeastern Brazil. We verified reliability by the Cronbach’s alpha, construct validity by the confirmatory factor analysis with SmartPLS software, and correlation by the job satisfaction scale. RESULTS: We problematized the overlap of items 9, 11, and 12 of the “participation in the team” factor and the “team goals” factor regarding its definition. The validation showed no overlapping of items and the reliability ranged from 0.92 to 0.93. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated suitability of the proposed model with distribution of the 38 items in the four factors. The correlation between teamwork climate and job satisfaction was significant. CONCLUSIONS: The version of the scale in Brazilian Portuguese was validated and can be used in the context of primary health care in the Country, constituting an adequate tool for the assessment and diagnosis of teamwork.