Development of an academic productivity scale for departments of physical medicine and rehabilitation

Objective: To determine which factors related to departments of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) might contribute to the academic productivity of members of the teaching staff of those departments, and to develop an instrument that measures them. Design: Prospective, inception cohort. Setting: University medical center, academic PM&R departments: Participants: PM&R academic departments. Intervention: Over a 6-year period, seven PM&R departments volunteered to use this instrument to measure academic productivity at 2-year intervals. Rasch analysis was applied to the generated data. Main Outcome Measure: Measurable items that were included in questions of the scale fell into six categories: research funding and/or experience; scholarly productivity; equipment and facilities; quality of the training program for resident physicians; continuing education efforts in research methodologies and professional organizational participation; and departmental leadership. Rasch analysis was applied to evaluate a new outcome instrument to measure academic productivity in PM&R departments. Results: Twenty-eight of the original 42 questions survived the Rasch analysis and were retained. Questions were dropped either because they did not fit the Rasch analysis (4 of 42 questions) or because application of the Rasch analysis demonstrated that they were inappropriately or outstandingly easy (10 of 42 were inappropriately or outstandingly easy). Conclusion: This shortened instrument of 28 questions fits the Rasch analysis, has questions that evenly range from easy to very difficult, and addresses six measurable categories that are correlates of PM&R departmental influences on the academic productivity of the PM&R teaching staff.