Systems Thinking

Advancing the Science of Continuous Quality Improvement

Systems Thinking

Research > Systems Thinking

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The Systems Thinking Scale:
A Measure of Systems Thinking

A Key Component of the Advancement of the Science of CQI  


Funding Agency: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Grant #65114)
Dates: October 2008 - December 2010
Principal Investigators:
  • Mary Dolansky, PhD, RN
  • Shirley Moore, PhD, RN, FAAN

The goal of this project was to develop and conduct psychometric testing of a measure of systems thinking, the Systems Thinking Scale (STS). For this project, we:

  1. Generated an initial bank of test items representative of the concept of Systems Thinking in CQI
  2. Performed preliminary field testing of the instrument to ensure clarity of meaning of the items and feasibility of the response format to end users
  3. Executed extensive psychometric testing to assess reliability and validity of the STS