Development and testing of the Jakubik mentoring benefits questionnaire among pediatric nurses

The ability to measure the benefits of mentoring among bedside nurses is essential for leaders in health care organizations to evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring initiatives for nurses. This article describes the development and testing of the Jakubik mentoring benefits questionnaire (Jakubik MBQ). The instrument is a 36-item tool that uses a 5-point Likert scale to measure the individual and organizational benefits of mentoring from the nurse protégé's perspective.

The original Jakubik MBQ was a 57-item tool developed and validated (validity = .96) with a panel of 6 expert judges prior to reliability testing in a pilot study with 11 subjects (Cronbach's alpha = .98). Subsequently, the 57-item instrument was used in 3 separate research studies (Jakubik, 2007a, 2007b; Jakubik, Eliades, Gavriloff, & Weese, 2011) with strong internal consistency reliability evidenced by Cronbach's alpha coefficients of .98, .98, and .97, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 57-item instrument with the 453 subjects from the aforementioned 3 studies.

Results of the factor analysis confirmed a total of 6 factors (subscales). Based on the factor analysis, the 4 original theoretical subscales were confirmed, 2 additional subscales were added, the original subscales were renamed, and the instrument was shortened to 36 items with each subscale containing 6 items and an overall Cronbach's alpha of .97.

Based on these overall findings, the Jakubik MBQ provides a valid and reliable instrument for use in measuring the mentoring benefits among pediatric staff nurse protégés engaged in mentoring relationships.