Variables and measures

Each of the variables in the conceptual model are defined below and the final measures used are described. It is important to note that the survey items assess each organization’s perception of the other agencies in the network thus representing one half or one side of the dyadic relationship examined in the study. Because the dyad is the unit of analysis, responses from each agency about the other organizations were matched with the responses from their partners, summed and/or calculated consistent with the

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directions for the measures. For example, Agency A’s responses about Agency B were added to Agency B’s responses about Agency A (unless otherwise specified). Measures for each variable are described below and further detail related to items, response scales, calculations, and data transformations are contained in Appendix C.

Partnerships (Dependent Variable)

The presence of a relationship is conceptualized in terms of resource transactions between organizations and will be measured using four items from Van de Ven and Ferry’s (1980) Resource Flows scale which also serves as the partnerships measure. This measure assesses the extent an organization sent resources to their partner in the past six months. Four different service delivery and administrative resources are assessed by the resources exchanged: 1) money; 2) use of staff; 3) client referrals, and 4) physical equipment/space. The original scale also measures the exchange of

consultation/technical assistance; public visibility, goodwill or prestige; and attainment of goals or mandates. These three types of resources will not be included because

consultation/technical assistance is extremely similar to sharing staff and their expertise, and both the attainment of public visibility and organizational goals can be considered benefits of partnerships, rather than resources that are exchanged. Additionally, the original measure also assesses the extent to which an organization receives resources however, preliminary feedback on the instrument indicated that participants may have difficulty estimating how much of another organization’s resources they receive. Therefore, only sent resources were directly measured – the resources each organization receives will be inferred based on the partners’ response. Similar measures have been

used in previous mental health services research (Morrissey, Calloway, Johnsen, & Ullman, 1997b). Ties based on each of the four types of recourses will be the basis for

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Aim 1, while a response to a service delivery related resource (client referrals) AND an administrative related resource (money, staff, or physical space) will constitute a partnership in Aim 2. The aggregate total score of all four types of resources will be examined in Aim 3.

Partnership Conditions (Mediating Variables)

The need for the partnership or the extent that organizations need one another to achieve their goals will be assessed using one scaled items in Van de Ven and Ferry’s

Resource Dependence scale. This scaled item assessed executive director’s perception of how much their organization needs the resources from their partner. To address

skewness, this variable was transformed by adding a constant and taking the square root.

Partnership benefits, the extent to which organizations perceive their

partnerships yield benefits or are effective, will be assessed using three items developed specifically for this study. Scaled items will assess the extent to which partnerships benefit three dimensions of health service delivery: 1) enhancing efficiency, 2) client access to services, and 3) quality of care (=.95). The efficiency item focuses on benefits for organizational functioning, while the access and quality items focus on benefits to clients.

The degree of conflict, or discord between organizations was measured using two items that will assess two dimensions of conflict: frequency and severity (=.93)

Organizational Characteristics (Independent Variables)

In this study, complementarity of services is the number of distinct service types across both partner organizations. This information was gathered from the January 2010 Needs Assessment conducted by the newly established Children’s Services Fund in St. Louis County (St. Louis County Children's Service Fund, 2010). County staff conducted

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a brief online survey to the members of the Putting Kids First Initiative where agencies reported types of services provided using the service categories and definitions for ten types of services fundable under Missouri State Statute RSMO 210.860: crisis

intervention, school and home-based prevention programs, temporary shelter, outpatient psychiatric and substance abuse treatment, individual, group and family counseling, services for pregnant teens, residential care services and respite care (Appendix A). In situations where there was missing data for the organizations in the needs assessment, services were categorized based on publically available organizational materials including program brochures, websites, and 990 forms listed on Guidestar.org. The number of services each organization provides was compiled for both organizations in the dyad and totaled, and a proportion was calculated that reflects the number of unique service programs given the total number of service programs offered across both partners:

# of Unique Services Offered between A & B ÷ (A’s # of Service Programs + B’s # of Service Programs)

Scores can range from 0.5 to 1.0 where the higher the score, the greater the complementarity of services. For example, if Organization A provides prevention services and Organization B also provides prevention services, together they offer two service programs, but only on unique service type, and their complementarity score is 0.5 [1/(1+1) = 0.5). Likewise if Organization C provides outpatient psychiatric services and Organization B offers prevention and substance abuse treatment services, together the pair offers a total of three programs, all of which are unique, therefore this dyad’s score is 1.0 [(1+2)/(1+2) = 1.0].

Since larger organizations may be more capable of providing many different services (there are greater numbers of staff allowing for differentiation of tasks and

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functions), size was used as a control. Two open-ended items in the survey assessed the number of (1) full- and (2) part-time employees which were summed2. This variable yielded a skewed distribution and values were modified using a square root

transformation.

Competition, the degree to which partner organizations have overlapping markets

(and thus compete for similar resources) was measured using three items drawn from Van de Ven and Ferry’s (1980) five-item domain similarity measure that assess the extent that each organization perceives that it draws similar resources from the environment as each of its partners. Funding sources, client populations, services, program goals, and

professional staff are assessed in the original scale along a five point Likert response scale but had low reliability (=.31). Given the low reliability of this scale, only three items (funding, client populations, and professional staff) were used. Client populations represent a production input, or the raw materials that are transformed by the organization where as funding and professional staff are both considered maintenance inputs

(Hasenfeld, 1983). On the other hand, program goals and services represent a different category of concepts: services are considered throughputs (Katz & Kahn, 1978) and program goals are related to the outputs of the organization. Cutting down the scale to include only those items which measure conceptually similar constructs in addition to the conversion of items to phrase completion scales improved the reliability (=.66). The reliability of the three measures is higher than using items for just funding and clients (=.55), funding and staff (=.582) or staff and clients (=.55). The distribution of

2 _{For those organizations that did not respond to the survey or this item, this data was extracted from IRS}

990s, however breakdowns by full- and part-time status were not available for all organizations so the number of full-time equivalents could not be calculated for each dyad with confidence.

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competition scores was highly skewed therefore transformed by adding a constant and taking the square root.

Trustworthiness was measured using one item from the inter-organizational trust

scale (Zaheer, McEvily, & Perrone, 1998). The original scale assesses cognitive,

behavioral, and emotional components of trust such as fairness, faith in their partner, and evenhanded negotiations with good reliability (α=.77). Four of these items may not have been valid for non-profit organizations as the questions assessed behavior related to product-specification, profiting, and negotiations. Therefore, only one item was retained (originally worded as “Supplier X is trustworthy”). The duration, or number of years that two organizations have been working together could influence the perceived

trustworthiness of a partner. Therefore duration was measured with a single ordinal item which was dichotomized (prior working relationship or no prior working relationship) in analysis.

Organizational financial performance was measured in terms of the three year average of the total net gains or losses of both partner organizations found in the IRS 990 forms. Net gains or losses were derived from the difference of total revenues and

expenses. Higher performing organizations will yield a net gain over time, while more poorly performing organizations run deficits. To smooth out yearly fluctuations due to grant, contract, or reimbursement regularities, and a three year average (2004-2007) of revenues and expenses were used. To account for differences in the size of annual

revenue among the organizations, these figures were normalized by taking the proportion of the net gain/loss to the total average annual revenue. Given the impact of the recession on non-profit organizations, the three reporting years immediately prior to the first full

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year of the recession (2008) were selected. The proportion of net gains or losses were summed across the dyad which yielded a skewed distribution. A constant was added (to make all values positive) and squared twice.

3.4 Quantitative Analysis