Designing and Testing an Inventory for Measuring Social Media Competency of Certified Health Education Specialists

Abstract

BackgroundSocial media can promote healthy behaviors by facilitating engagement and collaboration among health professionals and the public. Thus, social media is quickly becoming a vital tool for health promotion. While guidelines and trainings exist for public health professionals, there are currently no standardized measures to assess individual social media competency among Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialists (MCHES).ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to design, develop, and test the Social Media Competency Inventory (SMCI) for CHES and MCHES.MethodsThe SMCI was designed in three sequential phases: (1) Conceptualization and Domain Specifications, (2) Item Development, and (3) Inventory Testing and Finalization. Phase 1 consisted of a literature review, concept operationalization, and expert reviews. Phase 2 involved an expert panel (n=4) review, think-aloud sessions with a small representative sample of CHES/MCHES (n=10), a pilot test (n=36), and classical test theory analyses to develop the initial version of the SMCI. Phase 3 included a field test of the SMCI with a random sample of CHES and MCHES (n=353), factor and Rasch analyses, and development of SMCI administration and interpretation guidelines.ResultsSix constructs adapted from the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the integrated behavioral model were identified for assessing social media competency: (1) Social Media Self-Efficacy, (2) Social Media Experience, (3) Effort Expectancy, (4) Performance Expectancy, (5) Facilitating Conditions, and (6) Social Influence. The initial item pool included 148 items. After the pilot test, 16 items were removed or revised because of low item discrimination (r<.30), high interitem correlations (Ρ>.90), or based on feedback received from pilot participants. During the psychometric analysis of the field test data, 52 items were removed due to low discrimination, evidence of content redundancy, low R-squared value, or poor item infit or outfit. Psychometric analyses of the data revealed acceptable reliability evidence for the following scales: Social Media Self-Efficacy (alpha=.98, item reliability=.98, item separation=6.76), Social Media Experience (alpha=.98, item reliability=.98, item separation=6.24), Effort Expectancy(alpha =.74, item reliability=.95, item separation=4.15), Performance Expectancy (alpha =.81, item reliability=.99, item separation=10.09), Facilitating Conditions (alpha =.66, item reliability=.99, item separation=16.04), and Social Influence (alpha =.66, item reliability=.93, item separation=3.77). There was some evidence of local dependence among the scales, with several observed residual correlations above |.20|.ConclusionsThrough the multistage instrument-development process, sufficient reliability and validity evidence was collected in support of the purpose and intended use of the SMCI. The SMCI can be used to assess the readiness of health education specialists to effectively use social media for health promotio...

Social Media Self-Efficacy of Health Education Specialists

“…Social Media Self-Efficacy. A novel SM self-efficacy instrument (α = .98) was used to assess CHES/MCHES confidence to use SM for health education research and practice (Alber et al, 2015). Within the scale, participants are asked to indicate their level of confidence to complete 50 different SM tasks for health education purposes on a 6-point Likert-type scale (1 = extremely unconfident to 6 = extremely confident).…”

“…Items and their respective area can be found in Appendix A (available online at hpp.sagepub.com/ supplemental). The development and conceptualization of the complete SM self-efficacy scale can be found in previous work (Alber et al, 2015).…”

“…SM access was assessed by asking participants to rate their level of SM access at work on the following scale: (1) full access, (2) limited access, and (3) no access. To assess previous experience using SM in the context of health education, a 20-item SM experience scale (α = .98) for CHES/MCHES professionals (Alber et al, 2015) was also administered. As compared to measuring confidence to complete various SM tasks, SM experience items measured actual experience completing specific SM tasks.…”

“…Participants indicated their level of experience completing 20 SM tasks within an occupational health education setting on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = none, 2 = very limited, 3 = some experience, 4 = quite a lot, 5 = extensive). The complete SM experience scale can be found elsewhere (Alber et al, 2015).…”

Evaluation Tools to Appraise Social Media and Mobile Applications

“…Another interesting tool is the Social Media Competency Inventory (SMCI) that was developed to measure social media competencies for certified health education specialists [15]. The researchers conducted a multi-staged instrument development project.…”