Development and validation of the Nursing Workplace Satisfaction Questionnaire (NWSQ)

A nursing job satisfaction questionnaire was designed by a project group of nurses seeking a suitable job satisfaction measure to track as an outcome in a large Sydney hospital-wide models of nursing care project. Existing tools were rejected by the group as overly lengthy, US-biased and over-using respondent assessment of the character of the work environment as a proxy for job satisfaction, or happiness at work. A one-page, 14-item tool was developed after instrument reviewing and facilitated groupwork. The tool reduces to three measurable domains: intrinsic, extrinsic and relational job satisfaction. Exploratory factor analysis (n = 220 responses) confirmed the validity of this 'three-way' conceptualisation of nursing job satisfaction. Internal consistency analysis on a larger sample of responses (n = 459) yielded high Cronbach's Alpha values for all three domains and for the total overall, suggesting a stable and reliable measure. The NWSQ is short, one page, sensibly worded for Australian conditions and yields scoring against three validated domains. It holds significant potential utility as a standard metric for prospective ward-based or institution-wide performance trending.