Development of the Technology Readiness Inventory for Professionals (TRIP): field testing in Dutch addiction care professionals

For the successful adoption of technology in healthcare, professionals need to possess or develop a range of technology competencies, attitudes and resources. However, there is a lack of feasible, valid and reliable questionnaires to assess these attributes. An existing item set of 90 items across nineteen subscales, originally developed to measure adoption and technology competencies in health education, was adapted for healthcare professionals and administered in a cross-sectional online survey among addiction care professionals (n = 334) in the Netherlands. Item analysis and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) were used to reduce the number of items and to determine the underlying factor structure of the inventory. EFA suggested that the original nineteen hypothesised subscales tapped into three reliable underlying factors: (1) technology competencies ({omega} = 0.94), (2) attitude towards the use of technology ({omega} = 0.93) and (3) facilitating conditions ({omega} = 0.89). The Pearson intercorrelations were r = 0.53 (p < 0.001) between factors 1 and 3, r = 0.47 (p < 0.001) between factors 1 and 2 and r = 0.36 (p < 0.001) between factors 2 and 3, indicating that the questionnaire measures related, but sufficiently distinct underlying constructs supporting their discriminant validity. The 90 items in the original item set were reduced to 49 items that together provide a psychometrically sound and feasible inventory for measuring technology competencies, attitude and facilitating conditions in an addiction care context. Further research is needed to thoroughly validate the questionnaire, also in different healthcare settings and to confirm its dimensionality, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, and criterion validity. Author SummaryHealth related technologies (eHealth), such as online treatment platforms, can contribute to empowering people and improving accessibility and quality of care. To be able to use eHealth, healthcare professionals should adopt (health) technology and have technology competencies. In our study we focus on addiction care workers. Gaining insight into the adoption readiness and technology competencies of professionals working in addiction care is important to better understand what is needed to implement eHealth in this setting. We adapted an existing item set, originally developed to measure technology competencies and adoption in educational settings, to the context of addiction care. Furthermore, we aimed to validate and shorten this item set to a new inventory, suitable to apply in addiction care settings. Psychometric analyses of responses of 334 addiction care professional resulted in a 49-item Technology Readiness Inventory for Professionals (TRIP) measuring (1) technology competencies, (2) attitude toward technology and (3) facilitating conditions needed to be able to use technology. More research is needed to further validate TRIP, to apply it in different contexts and to determine whether it can also measure changes over time within an organisation.