Development of a Nursing Competence Scale of Intensive Care Homes for the Elderly

Reliability and Validity of Scale

Abstract

  The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the reliability and validity of a Nursing Competence Scale for use at intensive care homes for the elderly. Scale items which were selected based on the data obtained through concept analysis and semi-structural interviews underwent a review on their face validity and content validity, and 50 of them were included in the draft of evaluation of capability of nurses at special elderly nursing homes. A total of 603 nurses at 194 special elderly nursing homes nationwide answered an anonymous written questionnaire and their answers were put through item analysis, I-T correlation analysis and exploratory factor analysis. The analyzed results were studied in terms of criterion-related validity, known-groups validity, internal consistency and stability. The exploratory factor analysis extracted 34 items of four factors, which were named: “capability to support elderly in living his/her own life”; “capability to collaborate with people of different types of jobs”; “ability to detect a change and cope with it”; and “capability to offer elderly their desired end-of-life care”. Cronbach’s α coefficient for the entire scale was 0.958. Regarding criterion-related validity, nursing competence self-evaluation scale and other scales showed significant positive correlation. In terms of known-groups validity, the scores were significantly high with nurses at administrative positions and nurses who have received training. In the test-retest reliability measurement the correlation coefficient ρ between the first and second round total scores was 0.791 (ρ = 0.510-0.801 for subordinate factors), showing a significant correlation between them. The validity and reliability of the Nursing Competence Scale for use at intensive care homes for the elderly were confirmed.