The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II

The present study was conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of a newly adapted Chinese version of an instrument designed to measure structural empowerment among staff nurses.

Structural empowerment has been shown to be important to nurses in Western cultures, but its importance in China is unknown.

A convenience sample of 650 staff nurses was selected from six hospitals in Harbin, China. After linguistic adaptation using the forward-backward translation method, the 19-item Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire-II (CWEQ-II-CV) was answered by participants. Content validity, Cronbach's alpha, item-to-total correlation and exploratory factor analysis were used to assess the reliability and validity of the translated instrument.

In the factor analysis, a six-factor solution was found to be reasonable with the sub-dimensions of structural empowerment that included support (three items), resources (three items), information (three items), opportunity (three items), formal power (three items) and informal power (four items). Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total instrument was 0.92 and ranged from 0.68 to 0.86 in the six subscales. The item-to-total correlation coefficients ranged from 0.48 to 0.80. The findings also gave support for content validity.

Evidence was found to support the reliability and validity of the CWEQ-II-CV scale that measures the quality of the work environment for nurses from a structural empowerment perspective.

The translated version of CWEQ-II-CV can provide an effective evaluation tool for structural empowerment in the Chinese nursing workplace.