title: Closing the gap in quality assurance: A tool for evaluating group leaders.
abstract: A commitment to quality assurance means offering a cycle of feedback to those being evaluated. How to meet that commitment was the question asked by the Health Education Department of a large Health Maintenance Organization whose more than 70 facilitators annually provide instruction for over 3,000 enrollees. As part of the multi-faceted endeavor to develop a systematic quality assurance program for the department's offerings, a reliable participant-scored standardized tool had to be constructed. The staff of the department first identified two concepts as critical for quality instruction: interpersonal skills and technical competence. Based on these criteria a 49-item questionnaire was developed and tested during "pre-pilot" and pilot stages. By computer analysis, 27 items with an alpha-reliability coefficient of .94 remained to form the tool the department uses. The development of the evaluation tool and its use are described.
mesh_terms: D003258:Consumer Behavior; D005246:Feedback; D006266:Health Education / Q000592:standards*; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires