Development of a survey instrument to explore telehealth adoption in the healthcare domain

The purpose of this paper is to present a validated and reliable survey instrument to explore the determinants of telehealth adoption by healthcare pro-fessionals in developing countries. The survey instrument has been procreated for measuring the determinants of telehealth adoption in the Indian healthcare domain. A research design was conceived whereby three stages of methodologies were applied to establish and confirm the determinants. The stages are literature review, qualitative data collection and analysis, and finally, a survey for quanti-tative analysis generalising the findings over a large population to validate the findings of the first two stages. While the literature review and qualitative find-ings validated the perceived determinants or the items of the survey, the internal consistency or reliability of the items has been established by the survey con-ducted in India in the month of January to February 2020. A total of 11 responses were received by the online survey out of which 7 were full responses. Further, in the paper mode survey, 1,000 surveys were distributed among the Indian healthcare professionals out of which 343 completed responses were collected afterwards. The outcome of the pilot stage survey that stemmed out from the sur-vey development process was a comprehensive 97-item survey instrument, based on 5 point Likert-scale, along with acceptable levels of internal consistency and validity. The contribution of the paper lies with providing a validated, and relia-ble survey instrument which could be utilised for telehealth adoption or ICT adoption research in healthcare domains in developing countries