Psychometric Testing of a Coaching Survey

Reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing have become familiar terms. "Today there are no guarantees. If your organization doesn't take care of your customers and perform well, there's somebody out there who will" (Shula & Blanchard, 1995, p. 14). Recently, the provision of health care in the United States and in the military has been subjected to intense scrutiny concerning access, quality, and cost. The pressure is on for people to perform at their best. There has been a renewed emphasis in the business literature concerning "Coaching." Business leaders have come to recognize that organizational growth and survival in a competitive marketplace cannot be left to chance. Personnel must be hired, trained, and supervised throughout their career according to the organization's core values; they must be given permission to take risks and encouraged to visualize the future. Deming stated that nothing happens without personal transformation. This transformation can presumably occur through "Coaching." Coaching is the face-to-face relationship that occurs between a first-line manager and an employee. Business, military and nursing literature support the idea of coaching to enhance employee and organizational outcomes. However, there is no instrument available that specifically measures the coaching relationship, in terms of the behaviors manifested in the relationship by the coach or the protege. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to test the psychometric properties of a coaching survey developed by the investigators. More specifically, the following research questions will be asked: 1. What is the user acceptability of the Coaching Survey? 2. What is the internal consistency of the Coaching Survey? 3. What is the test-retest reliability of the Coaching Survey? 4. What are the predominant factors in the Coaching Survey? and 5. What elements of coaching occur most frequently among nurses and which elements are most lacking? Design: Descriptive, prospective design employing various instrument testing techniques. Convenience sampling will be used. Analysis: Measures of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and factor analyses will be performed. Coaching behaviors will be reported using descriptive statistics.