Development of a Validated Survey to Assess Virtual Interprofessional Education: Cross-Sectional Survey Study With Psychometric Validation

Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic led to the rapid integration of telemedicine into health care delivery. As a result, the ability to effectively collaborate in interprofessional virtual teams became a necessity, as did the development of educational opportunities designed to equip health care students with these skills. Currently, there is a lack of dedicated tools to assess learners’ ability and readiness to function as a well-coordinated virtual medical team. Objective The primary objective of this study was to conduct a psychometric assessment and validation of measures evaluating graduate-level health professions learners’ experience and familiarity within virtual interprofessional settings. The secondary objective was to integrate these 2 validated subscales into a comprehensive survey tool for use in interprofessional education course evaluation, spanning domains including demographics, telehealth knowledge and skills, understanding interprofessional roles, communication, and teamwork. Methods An interprofessional expert panel reviewed an initial item pool of 126 questions compiled from adaptations of previously validated instruments and newly developed items. Five experts with experience in interprofessional education and telehealth competencies independently rated each item, and the highest-ranked items were selected for distribution to graduate health professions students at Stony Brook University. The survey was administered during mandatory in-class instruction across the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Health Professions, and School of Social Welfare between November 2023 and June 2024. Participation was voluntary, and responses were anonymous. Item reduction focused on the 33 experience items and 8 familiarity items using interitem correlations, the Cronbach α, item-to-total correlations, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA); confirmatory factor analysis was not conducted. Results A total of 520 responses were obtained. After excluding records without any response to questions 9 or 10 and duplicate submissions, 393 records were included in the analysis. The final survey was reduced from 51 to 32 items, including 5 demographic items, 3 telehealth knowledge items, 17 retained experience items, and 5 retained familiarity items. For the experience domain, EFA identified 17 items loading onto 3 factors, accounting for 69.81%, 13.00%, and 9.58% of the variance. Internal consistency remained high, with the Cronbach α decreasing from 0.94 to 0.90. For the familiarity domain, EFA supported a refined 5-item structure, with the Cronbach α decreasing from 0.94 to 0.91. Conclusions This EFA-based validation study provides preliminary psychometric support for 2 subscales assessing graduate health professions learners’ experience and familiarity within virtual interprofessional settings. Additional validation work is needed before broader claims can be made regarding the full survey’s ability to evaluate educational outcomes or clinical impact.