Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this study was to verify reliability and validity of the Natural Disaster Preparedness Scale for Nursing Department of Hospital that we had prepared.
Method: The items for the scale were extracted from materials including literatures, and corrected and pretested by specialists. The scale consisted of the following 114 items: 49 in “Plan,” 11 in “Organize,” 14 in “Equip,” 22 in “Train,” 9 in “Exercise” and 9 in “Evaluate and Improve.” The subjects included nursing departments of 4,298 hospitals in Japan. The survey was made via postal mails, and analyses were made using correlation coefficient and reliability coefficient. The survey was conducted from May to June 2013.
Results: Responses were obtained from 723 hospitals. Of these, 555 facilities (12.9%) had sent valid answers. For reliability, alpha-coefficient for the entire scale score was 0.987, and that for each subscale was 0.843–0.971. The criterion-referenced validity and construct validity were also verified.
Conclusion: Although the number of items is still too large, this scale is useful to measure preparedness against natural disasters in hospital nursing departments.
