Background: Occupational therapy (OT) academic educators are vital in building the workforce and advancing the profession. With the retirement of senior faculty, hiring of new OT faculty members have increased. There have also been changes in national and global policy guidelines in OT education. These changes have brought forth a compelling need to examine the profile of Filipino OT educators. To this date, there has been no formal analysis of the Philippine OT academic education workforce. A study aiming at understanding this profile is important to inform OT educators, administrators, and policymakers on the development of strategic approaches that may address their needs and help build the capacity of this workforce.

Objectives: We aimed to establish an occupational profile of OT educators in the Philippines and to recommend capacity-building strategies for next-generation Filipino OT educators.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using the Adaptation Process in Academia Questionnaire. OT educators were recruited through their institutional affiliations.

Results: Ninety (53%) of the estimated 170 educators participated in the study, representing 16 schools with OT programs in the country. The median age is 26 years, majority female, and single. The academic profile shows that the majority have a bachelor's as their highest educational degree, work part-time, hold the instructor rank, nontenured, and have been in academia for 5+ years. Teaching is the primary role, and >50% of the time is spent on teaching tasks. The most frequently experienced challenges are balancing multiple roles and the need to develop competence in research skills. Most effective institutional resources are the availability of teaching resources and orientation programs. Excellent communication between university management and academic staff and the opportunity to participate in decision-making are perceived to be the most useful relationship support. Productivity in teaching is higher than in research and service.

Conclusion: The current OT academic workforce based on this study is young, in the early career stage, and expected to assume many roles, primarily teaching. They are most challenged in balancing multiple roles and how to advance their academic careers. Institutional resources and relationship supports are available but need to be reinforced and accessed. Strategic initiatives to build capacity include the development of communities of practice, increasing research engagement and productivity, increasing access to professional development programs, and faculty development initiatives.

Objective: The process of adaptation in academia can best be understood and measured using valid and reliable tools. To understand how occupational therapy educators adapt to academic roles and how they use adaptation to build academic careers, the Adaptation Process in Academia Questionnaire (APA-Q) was developed. The APA-Q is a 199-item tool with four sections: academic experiences (104 items); contexts (16 items); adapting responses (13 items); and adaptation outcomes (66 items). This study described the development and the process of determining the content validity of the APA-Q. Method: We conducted an extensive review of literature and the available faculty instruments in developing the APA-Q items. Six content experts were recruited to rate the 199-item and scale relevance of the instrument. Qualitative feedback were provided from open-ended questions. Item and scale content validity indices (I-CVI/S-CVI) were calculated. CVI and qualitative assessment informed questionnaire revisions. Results: Content experts rated 161 of the items (81%) to be highly relevant. The I-CVI of 30 items was acceptable (0.83). Eight items were rated irrelevant (0.5-0.66). S-CVI was excellent (0.97). In terms of constructs, experts agreed on the relevance of items (>0.80): academic experiences (99 or 95%); contexts (16 or 100%); adapting responses (12 or 92%); and adaptation outcomes (63 or 95%). Qualitative assessment indicated a lack of clarity in some items and instructions, redundancy in some of the items, the use of jargon, and missing items. Based on I-CVI and qualitative assessment, 12 items were deleted, 13 items were revised, and 10 items were added. Conclusion Context experts deemed the APA-Q to be relevant. Further establishment of its construct validity and reliability is warranted.
Occupational Therapy