Development and psychometric evaluation of nurses' perception towards the gap between knowledge and practice

The aim of the study was to develop a survey instrument and psychometrically evaluate nurses' perceptions of the gap between knowledge and practice. Although the nursing literature has widely documented a gap between knowledge and practice, no instrument has been developed to measure this gap.

Psychometric analysis was done on 513 nurses working in different positions at two large hospitals in Jeddah City.

Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the internal consistency and reliability of the research instrument, and a panel of experts evaluated the validity of the tool's content.

The content validity index computed from expert rankings was 0.89. Factor analysis yielded four major components: knowledge, practice, environment and learning. Cronbach's alpha indicated a high level of internal consistency and reliability for the component items. The newly developed scale will facilitate measuring nurses' perceptions of the knowledge-practice gap in clinical settings.