Policy alienation of public professionals: The development of a scale

Today, many public professionals feel estranged from the policy programs they implement. That is, they experience `policy alienation¿. This is of concern as, for satisfactory implementation, some identification with the policy is required. We develop a quantitative scale to measure policy alienation. Policy alienation is associated conceptually with five (sub) dimensions: 1. strategic powerlessness, 2. tactical powerlessness, 3. operational powerlessness, 4. societal meaninglessness and 5. client meaninglessness. We developed Likert-type items for these (sub) dimensions to create a policy alienation scale. This scale is refined by interviewing twenty experts. The refined scale is administered in a survey of 470 healthcare professionals implementing a new financial reward policy: Diagnosis Treatment Combinations. The resulting 23-item policy alienation scale shows good psychometric qualities. Construct validity tests show that policy alienation correlates as expected with job satisfaction, role conflicts and change willingness. A reliable and valid policy alienation scale can add to the understanding why implementing public professionals embrace or resist particular public policies.