Evaluating the Knowledge about Older Patients Quiz and the Kogan's Attitudes towards Old People Scale for Nursing Students’ Gerontological Learning Experiences in Ghana.

Abstract

Background: Understanding nursing students’ knowledge about and attitudes towards older adults’ using a context-specific survey instrument may help to identify, and design effective learning and teaching materials to improve the care for older adults. The study aimed to evaluate the items on the Knowledge about Older Patients Quiz and the Kogan's Attitudes towards Old People Scale suitable for the African context. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using second- and third-year nursing students from two public Nursing Training Institutions in Ghana. Data were collected from December 2019 - March 2020 using the Knowledge about Older Patients Quiz and the Kogan’s Attitudes Towards Old People Scale. Item response theory was employed to evaluate the difficulty level and discrimination indices of the Knowledge about Older Patients Quiz. Corrected item-to-total correlation analysis was conducted for the Kogan's Attitudes towards Old People scale. The internal consistency for both scales was examined.Results: Of the 170 participants, 169 returned completed surveys. The mean age of participants was 21years (SD = 3.7), and (54%) were female. Of the 30-items of the Knowledge about Older Patients Quiz, seven items were very difficult for most of the students to choose the correct response, and one was easy, as most of the students chose the correct response. Although, 22 items demonstrated appropriate difficulty level, discrimination indices, were used to select the final 15- items that discriminated moderately between upper and lower 25% performing students. The Kuder-Richardson-20 reliability was 0.30. Considering the Kogan's Attitudes towards Old People scale, 10-items were removed following negative and low corrected item-to-total correlation and a high Alpha coefficient if items were deleted. The final 22-items had a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.65.Conclusion: Evaluation of the scales demonstrated essential content validity and moderate internal consistency for the context of our study. Further research should focus on ongoing context specific refinement of the survey instruments to measure nursing students’ knowledge about and attitudes towards the care of older adults in the African context.