Development and testing of a scale to assess physician attitudes about handheld computers with decision support
Authors
Ray, Midge N.Houston, Thomas K.
Yu, Feliciano B.
Menachemi, Nir
Maisiak, Richard S.
Allison, Jeroan J.
Berner, Eta S.
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2006-06-27Keywords
Analysis of Variance*Attitude of Health Personnel
*Attitude to Computers
*Computers, Handheld
*Decision Support Systems, Clinical
Evaluation Studies as Topic
Humans
Physicians
*Psychometrics
Reproducibility of Results
Bioinformatics
Biostatistics
Epidemiology
Health Services Research
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
OBJECTIVE: The authors developed and evaluated a rating scale, the Attitudes toward Handheld Decision Support Software Scale (H-DSS), to assess physician attitudes about handheld decision support systems. DESIGN: The authors conducted a prospective assessment of psychometric characteristics of the H-DSS including reliability, validity, and responsiveness. Participants were 82 Internal Medicine residents. A higher score on each of the 14 five-point Likert scale items reflected a more positive attitude about handheld DSS. The H-DSS score is the mean across the fourteen items. Attitudes toward the use of the handheld DSS were assessed prior to and six months after receiving the handheld device. STATISTICS: Cronbach's Alpha was used to assess internal consistency reliability. Pearson correlations were used to estimate and detect significant associations between scale scores and other measures (validity). Paired sample t-tests were used to test for changes in the mean attitude scale score (responsiveness) and for differences between groups. RESULTS: Internal consistency reliability for the scale was alpha = 0.73. In testing validity, moderate correlations were noted between the attitude scale scores and self-reported Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) usage in the hospital (correlation coefficient = 0.55) and clinic (0.48), p < 0.05 for both. The scale was responsive, in that it detected the expected increase in scores between the two administrations (3.99 (s.d. = 0.35) vs. 4.08, (s.d. = 0.34), p < 0.005). CONCLUSION: The authors' evaluation showed that the H-DSS scale was reliable, valid, and responsive. The scale can be used to guide future handheld DSS development and implementation.Source
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2006 Sep-Oct;13(5):567-72. Epub 2006 Jun 23. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1197/jamia.M2096Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/47681PubMed ID
16799120Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1197/jamia.M2096