Title: Measuring the effectiveness of emergency management teams: scale development and validation

Authors: S. Van Der Haar; M. Segers; K.A. Jehn

Addresses: School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Tongersestraat 53, 6211 LM Maastricht, the Netherlands; PLATO, Leiden University, The Netherlands ' School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Tongersestraat 53, 6211 LM Maastricht, the Netherlands ' Melbourne Business School, 200 Leicester Street, Carlton Victoria 3053, Australia

Abstract: This paper is about the development and validity testing of a context-sensitive measure of the effectiveness of multidisciplinary emergency management teams that coordinate the multidisciplinary assistance on an incident scene. The scale can assist in future research, and serve as an instrument to evaluate team effectiveness during not only actual incidents but also emergency management exercises and training programmes. After developing the scale, we validated it in a study with a field sample of 50 teams executing realistic emergency management exercises. Results indicate that the scale is internally consistent. We showed construct validity by an assessment of both convergent and discriminant validity. The scale indicates participant-external rater invariance and can be aggregated to a team score. Suggestions are offered for improving the scale, future validity testing, and practical use of the measure.

Keywords: team effectiveness; scale development; validity testing; emergency management teams; multidisciplinary teams; training exercises.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEM.2013.058547

International Journal of Emergency Management, 2013 Vol.9 No.3, pp.258 - 275

Received: 06 Aug 2012
Accepted: 12 Sep 2013
Published online: 06 Jan 2014 *

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