title: Developing a scale for measuring professional equity among Canadian physicians.
abstract: This paper reports on progress made in defining and measuring the concept of professional equity through the development of a summative measure of professional equity and three of its components: financial, intrinsic and recognition equity. The study sample consisted of a stratified sample of 8375 Canadian physicians with usable responses from 2749 (32.8%). Following preliminary components analysis, items were grouped into constructs. Reliability of the constructs was then determined using Cronbach's alpha and total inter-item correlations followed by confirmatory factor analysis. A summary scale using all 15 equity items yielded a reliability: Cronbach's alpha=0.86. The sub-scales reliabilities were: financial equity (Cronbach's alpha=0.91); intrinsic equity (Cronbach's alpha=0.86); and recognition equity (Cronbach's alpha=0.70). The professional equity measures reported are therefore capable of assessing different aspects of equity and represent an advance over more general effort-reward scales or those that only measure the range of rewards.
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan, 110 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7N 5C9. roy.dobson@usask.ca
authors.forename: Roy Thomas
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Dobson
authors.forename: Rein
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lepnurm
authors.forename: Elmer
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Struening
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010816:Physician Incentive Plans; D010820:Physicians / Q000191:economics*; D012456:Salaries and Fringe Benefits / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*