Development And Psychonetric Evaluation Of Nursing Work Environment Scale: A Preliminary Study

ObjectivesTo explore the constituent elements of current nursing work environment,and develop the Nursing Work Environment (NWE) measuring scale which included nine characteristics of the nursing practice environment in the hospital.Reliability and validity of the scale were tested to provide a scientific and objective evaluation tool for both nurse leaders and future studies.MethodsThree steps were taken in this study. First, systematical review of both international and domestic environment-related literatures and research progresses was conducted. We proposed a conceptual hypothesis and formulated a 9-dimention scale according to current nursing environment in China. Second, data was collected from a random sample of registered female nurses at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Hangzhou (n = 100). Items were first selected and revised by psychometric analysis included: item analysis, exploratory factor analysis(principal components analysis with varimax rotation),spearman correlation analysis, and internal consistency reliability using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Third, The 53-item NWE scale was validated on a sample of 460 which was collected from 6 different-level hospitals,confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to verify the conceptual model. Data was collected and analyzed by SPSS 15.0 and AMOS 17.0.ResultsThe scale was finalized with nine components including 53 items.The nine components were autonomy, work load, professional development, coworker cohesion, leadership and management, system maintenance and system change, physical environment and logistic support,rights and protections, recognition.The internal consistency reliability, split-half reliability, construct validity and criterion-related validity were acceptable in psychometrics.Cronbach's alpha coefficient for NWE was 0.942, Guttman split-half coefficient was 0.903. 57.164% variance was explained for the 9 subscales,the correlation coefficient were0.514, -0.458, -0.525 between NWE and the three criterions. CFA showed good model fit which confirmed with the original conceptually derived model's structure.ConclusionsFindings showed the 53-item NWE scale was reliable and valid for use in health outcomes research to examine the nursing practice environment. More researches should be taken for further confirmation of the scale uses in the whole country.