Development and Psychometric Testing of the Nurses' Confidence Scale: Unique Families.

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Healthcare Education
• Family Studies

Background:

• Perinatal settings require nurses to provide care to diverse and complex family structures.
• Existing instruments may not adequately capture nurses' confidence in addressing the unique needs of these families.
• Developing a specialized tool is crucial for assessing and improving nursing care for unique families.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and psychometrically evaluate the Nurses' Confidence Scale: Unique Families (NCS:UF).
• To measure the confidence of perinatal/neonatal nurses in providing neutral, compassionate care to unique families.
• To assess the reliability and validity of the NCS:UF.

Main Methods:

• Prospective instrument development and psychometric study involving 62 perinatal/neonatal nurses.
• Scale development included expert content validity evaluation and item analysis.
• Psychometric testing involved reliability analysis (Cronbach's alpha) and exploratory factor analysis.

Main Results:

• The scale demonstrated good content validity (index = 0.82).
• High internal consistency was found for Part A (α = .92) and Part B (α = .90).
• Exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: skills and resources (α = .89) and awareness and sensitivity (α = .87).

Conclusions:

• The Nurses' Confidence Scale: Unique Families is a reliable and valid tool for assessing nursing confidence.
• The scale can inform educational strategies to enhance nurses' ability to provide sensitive care to unique families.
• This instrument supports improved quality of care for diverse populations in perinatal settings.