Determining the psychometric properties of the Enhancing Decision-making Assessment in Midwifery (EDAM) measure in a cross cultural context

© 2016 Jefford et al. Background: The ability to act on and justify clinical decisions as autonomous accountable midwifery practitioners, is encompassed within many international regulatory frameworks, yet decision-making within midwifery is poorly defined. Decision-making theories from medicine and nursing may have something to offer, but fail to take into consideration midwifery context and philosophy and the decisional autonomy of women. Using an underpinning qualitative methodology, a decision-making framework was developed, which identified Good Clinical Reasoning and Good Midwifery Practice as two conditions necessary to facilitate optimal midwifery decision-making during 2nd stage labour. This study aims to confirm the robustness of the framework and describe the development of Enhancing Decision-making Assessment in Midwifery (EDAM) as a measurement tool through testing of its factor structure, validity and reliability. Method: A cross-sectional design for instrument development and a 2 (country; Australia/UK) x 2 (Decision-making; optimal/sub-optimal) between-subjects design for instrument evaluation using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency and known-groups validity. Two 'expert' maternity panels, based in Australia and the UK, comprising of 42 participants assessed 16 midwifery real care episode vignettes using the empirically derived 26 item framework. Each item was answered on a 5 point likert scale based on the level of agreement to which the participant felt each item was present in each of the vignettes. Participants were then asked to rate the overall decision-making (optimal/sub-optimal). Findings: Post factor analysis the framework was reduced to a 19 item EDAM measure, and confirmed as two distinct scales of 'Clinical Reasoning' (CR) and 'Midwifery Practice' (MP). The CR scale comprised of two subscales; 'the clinical reasoning process' and 'integration and intervention'. The MP scale also comprised two subscales; women's relationship with the midwife' and 'general midwifery practice'. Conclusion: EDAM would generally appear to be a robust, valid and reliable psychometric instrument for measuring midwifery decision-making, which performs consistently across differing international contexts. The 'women's relationship with midwife' subscale marginally failed to meet the threshold for determining good instrument reliability, which may be due to its brevity. Further research using larger samples and in a wider international context to confirm the veracity of the instrument's measurement properties and its wider global utility, would be advantageous

Targeting and Customizing Research Data Management Services (RDM)

Designing library services is not new to our field. Service design done right is both challenging and rewarding. In this issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship, librarians across the country write about the importance of providing a solid Research Data Management (RDM) Service, coupled with targeting institutional partners and solid education practices

Editorial: Welcome to the Journal of eScience Librarianship

JESLIB Editor Elaine Martin\u27s inaugural editorial introducing the first issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship

JESLIB: Evolution of eScience Librarianship in the New England Region and Beyond

JESLIB Editor Elaine Martin introduces the articles in Volume 1, Issue 2 and discusses the strategic approaches for advancing eScience in the New England region and across the U.S

Charting a New Path: The Evolution of the Journal of eScience Librarianship

The Journal of eScience Librarianship (JeSLIB) has been successful in providing quality and timely scholarship in the area of data science and library services. However, it is a wise strategy to gather feedback and suggestions from readership when planning future changes and initiatives

Farewell from Founding Editor, Elaine Martin

Farewell from Journal of eScience Librarianship’s Founding Editor, Elaine R. Martin, who is stepping down as Editor-in-Chief with this issue

Advancing Data Management Education and Services

This issue’s editorial focuses on the response of librarians and information professionals to the United States government’s open access mandates. Librarians and information professionals realize that developing strong data science education curriculum and data literacy skills, dialoging with each other about shared staffing goals, and discovering which data services an institution needs, are vital in helping institutions be able to meet these mandates

Highlighting the Informationist As a Data Librarian Embedded in a Research Team

JESLIB Editor Elaine R. Martin introduces the papers in Volume 2, Issue 1 (2013), which focuses on the role of and the Informationist or Embedded Librarian in the scientific research process. As biomedical science becomes more data intensive, researchers are faced with a range of data management challenges, problems, and needs. Health sciences librarians are ideal partners for offering scientists at their institutions a range of data management services

What is Data Literacy?

JESLIB Editor Elaine R. Martin introduces the articles in Volume 3, Issue 1 by discussing data literacy and the various forms of library services designed to support it. Martin highlights that librarians are already taking advantage of the opportunity to provide data support services and that the articles in this issue can serve as a point of reference for developing further data services and strategies for service development

Biomedical Research Data Management Open Online Education: Challenges & Lessons Learned

The Best Practices for Biomedical Big Data project is a two year collaboration between Harvard Medical School and University of Massachusetts Medical School, funded by the NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative for Resource Development. The Best Practices for Biomedical Research Data Management Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provides training to librarians, biomedical researchers, undergraduate and graduate biomedical students, and other interested individuals on recommended practices facilitating the discoverability, access, integrity, reuse value, privacy, security, and long term preservation of biomedical research data. This poster highlights lessons learned from the first year of this project. Built upon the New England Collaborative Data Management Curriculum, the development team sought to use existing curricular materials to create a fully online course. The course is designed with an open course platform, WordPress Learning Management System (WPLMS), in order to facilitate broad access. Each of the MOOC’s nine modules is dedicated to a specific component of data management best practices and includes video lectures, presentation slides, research teaching cases, readings, activities, and interactive quizzes. The project team overcame multiple challenges related to creating an open online course: curriculum, audience and software. Working towards overcoming these, the Best Practices for Biomedical Research Data Management MOOC development team has moved slowly and deliberately, created additional content, and added content experts to provide guidance. These lessons learned will assist course development beyond this project, adding to best practices for creating massive open online courseware. Lessons learned include: teaching method influences the curriculum and content should not be developed in isolation from the teaching method; content is dependent on audience and supplementary content can be used to bridge audience gaps; and implementing new or unfamiliar technologies is challenging so allow more time in the timeline for project team to work with open source platform