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The development of an instrument to measure the professional role attitudes of diploma nursing students

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument that would measure the professional role attitudes of diploma nursing students. A Likert scale was constructed to fulfill the above purpose. Items were designed to address the following six characteristics of professional nursing extracted from the literature: commitment to education, service orientation, autonomy, participation in the professional association, accountability, and expectation of appropriate remuneration. The items were critiqued by a panel of nursing instructors and revised prior to administration. The original instrument, which consisted of 60 items, was completed by 407 diploma nursing students from k schools of nursing in British Columbia. On the basis of the correlation of each item with the total score, 4O items were selected for the final instrument in the study. Data analysis indicated that the instrument requires revision before it will be suitable for use. Two of the items were found to be ambiguous, and a number of others were found to be insufficiently discriminating. The reliability index for the final instrument was high enough to be considered acceptable for use in basic research on groups. Although the results of factor analysis were inconclusive, it was found that, with the exception of education and accountability, items did not cluster in accordance with the six characteristics of professional nursing extracted from the literature. Factor analysis also suggested that the concept of professional attitudes might be too broad to measure in one homogeneous scale. Content validity was considered to be inherent in the methods employed for instrument construction.

Text

2010-04-15

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/23607

Nursing

University of British Columbia

Graduate