DEVELOPMENT OF AN ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY SCALE FOR DEPARTMENTS OF PHYSICAL MEDICINE AND REHABILITATION

Objective: To determine which factors related to departments of physic al medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) might contribute to the academic productivity of members of the teaching staff of those departments, a nd to develop an instrument that measures them. Design: Prospective, i nception cohort. Setting: University medical center, academic PM&R dep artments. Participants: PM&R academic departments. Intervention: Over a 6-year period, seven PM&R departments volunteered to use this instru ment to measure academic productivity at 2-year intervals. Rasch analy sis was applied to the generated data. Main Outcome Measure: Measurabl e items that were included in questions of the scale fell into six cat egories: research funding and/or experience; scholarly productivity; e quipment and facilities; quality of the training program for resident physicians; continuing education efforts in research methodologies and professional organizational participation; and departmental leadershi p. Rasch analysis was applied to evaluate a new outcome instrument to measure academic productivity in PM&R departments. Results: Twenty-eig ht of the original 42 questions survived the Rasch analysis and were r etained. Questions were dropped either because they did not fit the Ra sch analysis (4 of 42 questions) or because application of the Rasch a nalysis demonstrated that they were inappropriately or outstandingly e asy (10 of 42 were inappropriately or outstandingly easy). Conclusion: This shortened instrument of 28 questions fits the Rasch analysis, ha s questions that evenly range from easy to very difficult, and address es six measurable categories that are correlates of PM&R departmental influences on the academic productivity of the PM&R teaching staff. (C ) 1997 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the Ame rican Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.