The Scale on COmmunity care PErceptions (SCOPE) for nursing students: A development and psychometric validation...

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Community Health Nursing
• Instrument Development

Background:

• Student nurses' perceptions of community care are crucial for workforce development.
• Existing instruments may not adequately capture these perceptions.
• Understanding these perceptions can inform curriculum design to address nursing shortages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an instrument measuring student nurses' perceptions of community care (SCOPE).
• To assess the psychometric properties of the SCOPE instrument.
• To provide a tool for evaluating and potentially improving nursing education in community care.

Main Methods:

• Utilized DeVellis' staged model for instrument development and validation.
• Constructed the Scale of Community Care Perception in Education (SCOPE) based on literature review.
• Evaluated psychometric properties using exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis on data from 1062 nursing students.

Main Results:

• The SCOPE is a 35-item scale with good psychometric properties (Cronbach's α = 0.892).
• Factor analysis identified key components: affective (enjoyment, utility), placement (learning, satisfaction), and profession (development, collaboration, caregiving, workload).
• High response rate (81%) from diverse institutions enhances generalizability.

Conclusions:

• The SCOPE is a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing student nurses' perceptions of community care.
• Findings can guide curriculum redesign to positively influence student perceptions.
• Improving perceptions may help alleviate the community nursing workforce shortage.