Psychometric evaluation of Nurse Professional Competence Scale—Short‐form Chinese language version among nursing graduate students

Abstract

Aim:The aim of the study was to determine the psychometric properties, construct validity and internal consistency of the Chinese language version of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form.Design: A methodological design was used.Methods: Questionnaire data from 260 nursing students nearing graduation from 2 universities in China were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis, known-group validity and internal consistency. Results:The confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model was acceptable, and the analyses for known-group validity revealed statistically significant differences in all factors and the total scale of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form. Internal consistency revealed that Cronbach's alpha values exceeded 0.70 for all factors and the total scale. The Chinese language version of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form has acceptable construct validity and good internal consistency.

Psychometric evaluation of the Austrian version of the Nurse Professional Competence Scale Short Form (NPC–SF–AUT)

“…One consequence of this development is a presumed heterogeneity in the prevalence of particular nursing competencies in current Austrian nursing practice. This specific education-related heterogeneity is also reflected in the sample of our study and therefore might explain the prevalent differences towards item-specific competence estimations between the evaluated study samples in other European [32,35,37] and Asian [34,36,38] countries and our study cohort and, eventually, the subsequent change of the instruemnts' factorial structure.…”

“…Nevertheless, the factor structure of the NPC-SF-AUT differs strongly from that of the original scale. The original scale version as well as the country-specifically adapted NPC Scale Short Form versions in Saudi-Arabia, [34] China [36] and Croatioa [35] comprise item-specific nursing competencies under a total of six factors. [33] However, Lee et al [38] and Prosen et al [37] demonstrated altered scale structures after testing for construct validity, which was also revealed in our principal axis factor analysis results.…”

“…One reason for this difference might relate to different sample characteristics. Nilsson et al [33] as well as Xu et al [36] included exclusively nursing students at the time of their graduation when psychometrically testing the scale. This implies that the assessment of item-related competencies only referred to individual practical experiences gained from the perspective of trainees.…”

“…The reliability of the country-specific NPC Scale Short Form versions revealed consistent good to excellent homogeneity of the items at factor level after checking internal consistency using Cronbach's Alpha. [34][35][36][37][38][39] A revision of the item-specific results of a previous psychometric evaluation of the Austrian version of NPC Scale [30] indicated a good to excellent relevance of the respective items which are represented in the NPC Scale Short Form, with item content validity indexes (I-CVIs) ranging from 0.83 to 1.00.…”

“…[32] The NPC Scale Short Form has so far been tested for its psychometric properties in several countries worldwide. The original six-factor structure of the original instrument was confirmed after factor analysis in three studies, [34][35][36] while Prosen et al [37] revealed a fourfactor structure after confirmatory factor analysis and Lee et al [? ] extracted five factors based on principal component analysis.…”