Development of the 'Attitudes to Health Professionals Questionnaire' (AHPQ): a measure to assess interprofessional attitudes

This paper describes the development and preliminary validation of a measure to investigate interprofessional attitudes and how these attitudes change over time. Items for the questionnaire were elicited from ‘construct exercises’ with staff from different Health Schools resulting in a 20-item ‘Attitudes to Health Professionals Questionnaire’ (AHPQ). The questionnaire was completed by first year students from five different health professions. Its structure was evaluated using principal components analysis, the internal consistency was determined and the test-retest reliability assessed. Analysis of these data led to rephrasing/ removal of certain items and a revised form of the AHPQ. The revised AHPQ was completed by a different cohort of students and a preliminary validation was carried out. A solution with two main components labelled ‘caring’ and ‘subservient’ emerged from analysis of the structure of the initial AHPQ, the overall internal consistency was good although the test-retest reliability varied. Preliminary validation of the revised questionnaire suggested significant differences, on both scales, in students' attitudes towards different health professions at the outset of their training. The AHPQ appears to be a useful instrument for the assessment of interprofessional attitudes in the health professions.