Content validation of the evidence-based nursing practice assessment tool

Area of Science:

• Nursing Research
• Psychometrics
• Health Professions Education

Background:

• The evidence-based nursing practice assessment tool (EBNPAT) was developed to measure nurses' competence in the five-step evidence-based practice model.
• Assessing the content validity of newly developed measurement scales is crucial but challenging.
• Traditional content validity index (CVI) has limitations in evaluating inter-rater agreement and consistency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the content validity of the EBNPAT.
• To establish the representativeness, comprehensiveness, and clarity of EBNPAT items.

Main Methods:

• An expert panel of 42 nursing and health academics and researchers evaluated EBNPAT items.
• Experts rated item agreement on a four-point ordinal scale.
• Item-CVI (I-CVI), intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and Cronbach's alpha were used to assess content validity.

Main Results:

• All item-CVIs for representativeness, comprehensiveness, and clarity exceeded 0.9.
• Overall agreement and consistency among experts were greater than 0.65.
• The study benefited from a large expert sample size and substantial consensus.

Conclusions:

• The EBNPAT exhibits high content validity across all construct items.
• This finding supports the progression of EBNPAT to further psychometric evaluation.
• The study presents a sophisticated statistical methodology for content validity assessment applicable to future scale development.