Undergraduate Nursing Students’ Professional Competencies Scale: Development, Validity, and Reliability

Abstract

Objective: To develop and test the validity and reliability of the "Undergraduate Nursing Students' Professional Competencies Scale.Methods: A 59-item pool was developed from the literature on nursing students' competencies and education standards and reviewed by 26 nursing education experts. The item-content validity ratio was calculated using the "Lawshe Technique". Face validity was performed through a pilot study with 10 final-year nursing students. Following expert feedback, one item was removed and four were added, resulting ina 62-item draft scale. The scale was administered online to 320 fourth-year nursing students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA and CFA), along with reliability testing, were conducted. Reporting followed the STROBE checklist.Results: Expert panel members scored an initial item pool with 59 items. One item with a low content validity ratio was removed, and four items were added to the questionnaire. The draft tool consisted of 62 items. The item-total correlation value of each item was adequate. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin and Bartlett's sphericity tests showed that the sample size was sufficient. EFA removed 12 items with low factor loadings, leaving 50 items across five factors: management and organization (20), nursing care (12), research (8), communication and collaboration (6), and leadership (4). The CFA confirmed this five-factor structure with the applicable chi-square/degrees-of-freedom value, fit indices, RMSEA and SRMR values. Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.891 to 0.967 across the factors and was 0.976 for the overall scale.Conclusion: The scale was valid and reliable for evaluating professional competencies in nursing education. Further studies with larger samples are recommended.