Developing a behaviour rubric for the practical model of ethical behaviour for clinical nursing

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Medical Ethics
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Assessing ethical behavior is crucial in nursing practice.
• A reliable and valid tool is needed to evaluate nurses' ethical conduct.
• Existing assessment methods may lack specific focus on ethical behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an ethical behaviour rubric for nurses.
• To evaluate the reliability and validity of the developed rubric.
• To provide a standardized tool for assessing ethical behavior in nursing.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 10-item ethical behaviour rubric.
• Administered the rubric to 154 nurses in Japan.
• Assessed intra-rater and inter-rater reliability using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).
• Evaluated internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha.
• Tested construct validity via exploratory factor analysis.
• Assessed criterion validity using the known-groups method.

Main Results:

• High intra-rater (ICC=0.9) and inter-rater (ICC=0.84) reliability.
• Excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's α=0.96).
• Significant correlation between nursing experience and rubric scores (p<0.001).
• Exploratory factor analysis identified four factors with high reliability (α=0.77–0.93).

Conclusions:

• The developed ethical behaviour rubric is a reliable and valid instrument.
• The rubric effectively assesses ethical behaviour among nurses.
• This tool can be utilized in Japan for evaluating nursing ethical conduct.