The Compassion Competence Scale Arabic version: A validation study among student nurses and interns in Saudi Arabia

The aim of this study is to assess the validity and reliability of the Compassion Competence Scale Arabic version for Saudi nursing students and interns.

Compassion is an essential element of quality health care in which training nursing students to deliver compassionate care is important. Assessment of compassion competence of Arabic-speaking nursing students requires a valid and reliable tool.

This is a descriptive and cross-sectional study.

This investigation was conducted from April to May 2019 in two universities in Saudi Arabia involving nursing students and interns. Cultural adaptation was performed using a forward-backward translation method. Content validity and construct validity through exploratory factor analysis were established. Internal consistency, stability and reliability were also determined for the scale.

The Arabic version has an excellent content validity. The exploratory factor analysis supported a three-factor solution that accounts for 50.62% of the scale's variance. The Cronbach's alpha of the scale was 0.806, whereas the Cronbach's alpha of the subscales ranged from 0.739 to 0.797. The intraclass correlation coefficient of the two-week test-retest scores was 0.84. The university, gender, year level and family type predicted the students' compassion competence.

The Arabic version can be used to measure Arabic-speaking nursing students' compassion competence in clinical areas.