The development of a delirium knowledge test for intensive care nurses: A validity and reliability study

This study aimed to determine the validity and reliability of the Delirium Knowledge Test for the Intensive Care Nurse.

The item analysis and reliability of the test was assessed in a sample of 274 nurses working in the internal and surgical adult intensive care units of one public and three university hospitals in Turkey between 15 May and 15 August 2017. Content and face validity, item analysis and reliability coefficients were used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the test.

The item difficulty index and item discrimination index of the questions included in the draft form of the 40-item test were found to range from 0.22 to 0.93 and from 0.06 to 0.51, respectively. At the end of the analyses, 14 items were excluded from the draft test, 11 according to the item difficulty index and 3 according to the item discrimination index. Correspondingly, the final version of the test consisted of 26 questions. The item difficulty index of the final test was 0.22 to 0.79, and the item discrimination index was 0.20 to 0.51. The difficulty level of the final test was found to be 59%, and the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was 0.83.

The results of the study showed that the test had good content and face validity and reliability for measuring the delirium knowledge of intensive care nurses.