A cultural adaptation study of nursing informatics competency scale

The objective of this study is to examine the factor structure, internal consistency reliability and responsiveness of an instrument related to the informatics competency of nurses.

Informatics is a scientific discipline that needs to be integrated into nursing practice. There is no current and valid tool to measure the informatics competency of nurses in Turkey.

This study has a methodological design.

The Self-Assessment of Nursing Informatics Competency Scale-18 was used to collect data. The original scale was translated into Turkish in a process of forward and back-translation. Data were collected in a setting of 190 respondents with a random subsample in a hospital. Internal reliability was tested using Cronbach's alpha. The factor structure of the instrument was determined through exploratory factor analysis. Factorial invariance was tested in a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis.

Exploratory analysis with varimax rotation extracted three factors comprising 18 items that explained 62.1 % of the variance: applied computer skills (α=.91), role (α=.67) and basic computer skills (α=.77).

The current version of the instrument is well grounded in the theoretical framework of informatics competence in nursing practice.