Development of an instrument for assessment of Korean nurses' attitudes toward obese patients

The purpose of this study was to verify the validity and reliability of an instrument and to identify nurses' attitudes toward obese patients.

Basic questions were developed after a preliminary published work review, and content validity was verified by a group of experts. Principle components analysis was applied to the verified questions as a factor analysis, and a confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify whether each question qualified for a specific factor and construct reliability. Average variances were extracted and checked to appraise the reliability of each factor.

The first 74 questions composed with reference to the published work to identify nurses' attitudes toward obese patients were tested for construct validity and modified via factor analysis to 32 questions. Then, the questions were again modified to 29 questions with four factors after a confirmatory factor analysis. Construct reliability and the average variance extracted for the factors were verified to demonstrate that this tool was highly reliable to explain the 29 factors under the four categories.

These results show nurses' attitudes toward obese patients. Further research using various subject groups and appropriate measures is needed.