Abstract
Objectives There is an urgent need to build healthy communities and increase the public health nursing capacity to solve the complex and diverse health problems in modern society. The purpose of this study was to develop a scale called the Competences of Public health nurses in Public health policy (hereinafter referred to as the CPP scale), and to test the reliability and validity of the scale.
Methods A literature review, individual qualitative interviews with five expert public health nurses, and surveys of all public health nurses in the local governments in one ordinance-designated city in Japan (n=460) were conducted.
Results A factor analysis of the results showed that the CPP scale contained two factors and 16 items: the first factor was “Community Partnership,” and the second factor was “Community Nursing Diagnosis Cycle.”
Confirmatory factor analysis for the CPP scale demonstrated high fit indices (GFI=.889, AGFI=.847, CFI=.956, RMSEA=.068). The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.93, and the scale scores were significantly correlated with the standardized scale, the Competency Measurement of Creativity (r=0.52, P<0.01).
Conclusion It was concluded that the CPP scale had sufficient reliability and validity to assess the competency of public health nurses in forging public health policy.
