The recent scientific and technological advances have led to increasing complexity of interventions in health, as well as profound changes in the respective organizations and professions. The Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians are part of this professional complexity. Training of the Diagnosis and Therapy professionals at the higher education level is very recent in Portugal. Initially, these professionals were a part of a larger group of technicians working in the field of the clinical analyzes and public health. For that reason, their training was not specifically directed to their functions and activities. So, their professional profile has evolved from an auxiliary technician profile to an autonomous profile specifically oriented to diagnosis and therapy health activities. Currently, the Diagnosis and Therapy professionals are trained in the Polytechnic Schools in a frame of a specifically training model. The need to be in line with the technological and scientific developments have been decisive for that evolution and for those professionals’ concern with their continuing updating in order to adequately and competently perform their role. So, the continuing education of those professionals should be promoted to meet the professional and personal training needs, and to improve effectiveness and efficiency of institutions, as well. In fact, the continuing qualification of the human resources constitutes a “sine qua non” condition to improve organizational effectiveness and this plays an essential role in the Development process of a Nation (Houtkoop & Kamp, 1998). Participation of the Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians in CVET offerings is an issue not yet studied in Portugal. For this reason, the present study intends to analyze factors influencing participation in continuing education of those health professionals. More specifically, the study aims to understand how factors associated to participation in CVET activities influence the Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians’ decision to participate in those learning activities in Portugal. Knowing and understanding the factors influencing participation in continuing qualification activities will give a relevant contribute not only to promote participation in continuing learning activities but also to devise effective CVET strategies to respond to the challenges brought by technological innovation in the field of diagnosis and therapy. The study will be theoretically framed by the Interdisciplinary, Sequential-Specificity, Time-Allocation, Life-span (ISSTAL) model of social participation (Smith & Macaulay, 1980) and already tested in USA by Cookson (1986) and in Alentejo and other EU regions by Brown & others (2005) for studying adult participation in learning activities.

The study will use a cross-sectional survey complemented by a focus group strategy to discuss survey results by continuing training specialists and diagnosis and therapy technicians to further understanding nature of the participation factors. The cross-sectional survey will use an instrument specifically developed to collect data from a random sample drawn from a population constituted by the Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians working in health organizations located in the Lisbon Region. Data from survey will firstly submitted to factorial analysis to identify class dimensions of factors influencing individuals´ participation in training and other learning activities. Relationships between the different factors and participation will be estimated by multiple regression analyses. Data from Focus Group will be analysed by content analysis.

According to results from previous studies, it will be expected that the ISSTAL model will be useful for explaining and understanding participation of Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians in continuing training activities. It is also expected that the study will give an important contribute for promoting equal access of all Diagnosis and Therapy Technicians to CVET activities as a relevant pathway for a sustainable development of the diagnosis and therapy activities in the Portuguese society.