The validation of the Supervision of Thesis Questionnaire (STQ)

The supervision process is characterized by differences between the supervisors' and the students' expectations before the start of writing a bachelor thesis as well as after its completion. A review of the literature did not reveal any scientifically tested questionnaire for evaluating nursing students' expectations of the supervision process when writing a bachelor thesis.

The aim of the study was to determine the construct validity and internal consistency reliability of a questionnaire for measuring nursing students' expectations of the bachelor thesis supervision process.

The study had a developmental and methodological design carried out in four steps including construct validity and internal consistency reliability statistical procedures: construction of the items, assessment of face validity, data collection and data analysis.

This study was conducted at a university in southern Sweden, where students on the "Nursing student thesis, 15 ECTS" course were consecutively selected for participation. Of the 512 questionnaires distributed, 327 were returned, a response rate of 64%.

Five factors with a total variance of 74% and good communalities, ≥0.64, were extracted from the 10-item STQ. The internal consistency of the 10 items was 0.68. The five factors were labelled: The nature of the supervision process, The supervisor's role as a coach, The students' progression to self-support, The interaction between students and supervisor and supervisor competence.

A didactic, useful and secure questionnaire measuring nursing students' expectations of the bachelor thesis supervision process based on three main forms of supervision was created.