Development of a scale to measure nursing care for enhancing children’s self-care skills and parents’ care skills during hospitalization

Abstract

 The purpose of this study was to develop a nursing scale to enhance children’s self-care skills and parents’ care skills during hospitalization, and to examine its validity and reliability. Methods: The study comprised three processes: development of a nursing scale draft based on previous qualitative research and literature studies, refinement of the questionnaire items, and confirmation of reliability and validity. Reliability and validity were confirmed by administering the questionnaire to 300 family members raising children who had been hospitalized at a pediatric specialty hospital. The following is a summary of the results of the study. By item and exploratory factor analysis, 17 items and 3 factors were extracted. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis confirmed fit of the hypothesized model obtained in the exploratory factor analysis. In terms of reliability, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.961 for all 17 items of the scale, ranging from 0.902 to 0.927 for each factor. The correlation coefficient with the external criterion “nurse’s level of support” was 0.637. Conclusion: The scale has a certain level of reliability and validity, and can be used in future clinical practices.