The purpose of this study is to make a preliminary investigation on the reliability and validity of the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index, PES-NWI (Japanese version). Self-reporting questionnaires were sent by mail to 665 nurses working at 6 hospitals in Japan. There were 282 (42.4%) responses.
The reliability of the subscales and a composite measure of the PES-NWI were supported by the Cronbach's alphas and correlation coefficients between the pair answers reported twice. Cronbach's alphas were 0.90 for composite, 0.76-0.86 for the subscales, and the correlation coefficients based on the test-retest method were 0.65-0.83.
Content validity of the PES-NWI was confirmed. The subscales and a composite were related to certain variables including nursing satisfaction (
P<0.05). Factorial validity of the 3 subscales such as “Staffing and Resource Adequacy” and “Collegial Nurse-Physician Relations” was high, although the 2 subscales did not indicate a factorial separation. Construct validity will require further investigation by using the PES-NWI that includes a more variety group of subjects in future studies.
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