[Creation of a professional development scale for public health nurses and investigation of its reliability and validity]

To contribute to public benefit, each professional is required to improve his/her specific skills and to acquire competencies that affect his/her professional development. The purpose of this study was to develop a Professional Development Scale (PDS) for Public Health Nurses (PHNs) and to investigate its reliability and validity.

The subjects were full-time PHNs working at 135 prefectural public health centers and 115 municipal health centers that were randomly chosen. Questionnaires were distributed by mail. The item pool of the PDS was selected from previous studies and refined by the present researchers.

Of a total of 250 health centers, 184 (73.6%) returned questionnaires; a total of 1261 (70.1%) PHNs responded, and 1112 responses were valid. Item and factor analyses showed the PDS to consist of 4 factors and 16 items. The factors were: "Competency development by self-responsibility", "Competency development by learning from others/resources", "Succession and improvement of one's specialty", and "Behavior according to professional principles". Cronbach's alpha values ranged from 0.77 to 0.93; hence, reliability was proven. The correlation coefficient between the PDS score and external variables was 0.7.

The results obtained proved the reliability and validity of a PDS containing 4 factors. The PDS could thus be used for self-evaluation and setting of learning goals by PHNs.