Development of a factorial survey to explore restricting a child's movement for a clinical procedure

To report on the development of a factorial survey to explore nurses' participation in restricting children's movement for clinical procedures in hospital.

Exploration of implicit practices, such as restriction, is essential in ensuring that the care delivered to children addresses their developmental needs.

A questionnaire was developed that consisted of two sections: vignettes and the professional and personal characteristics of the nurse. It was sent to 166 nurses and 105 questionnaires were returned, resulting in a response rate of 63.3 per cent.

The development of the factorial survey included identifying and determining the levels of the independent variables, identifying the dependent variable, writing the vignette frame and associated questions, and randomly generating vignettes.

Reliability of the tool was established as a significant correlation was found for responses with Pearson's r=0.80. There was a small correlation between five of the 14 variables and the dependent variable 'likelihood of restricting a child for a clinical procedure'.

A factorial survey was found to be a robust tool in exploring a sensitive issue, allowing for the inclusion of multiple variables for consideration in the analysis.

The factorial survey enables rigorous exploration of the influences of personal and professional characteristics of a profession across a broad spectrum of clinical scenarios, and offers in-depth insight into the effect of differentiations in these characteristics on a variety of care delivery situations and how they influence behavioural intentions.