Psychometric testing of the caring assessment tool: Educational version (CAT-Edu©)

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Healthcare Professional Development

Background:

• Caring is essential for quality nursing education, promoting nurse-patient relationships and holistic care.
• Slovenian nursing institutions face challenges in assessing caring behaviors due to a lack of culturally sensitive tools.
• This hinders the development of caring competencies and may impact educational quality and patient outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Caring Assessment Tool-educational version (CAT-edu) in Slovenia.
• To provide a culturally sensitive instrument for assessing caring behaviors in nursing education.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional, descriptive study involving translation and psychometric evaluation of the CAT-edu.
• Data collected from 703 undergraduate nursing students across four faculties (October 2021-February 2022).
• Methods included forward-backward translation, expert content validity assessment, educator face validity assessment, principal component analysis for construct validity, and Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency.

Main Results:

• The translated CAT-edu demonstrated strong content validity, with most items scoring highly.
• Principal component analysis confirmed construct validity (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin = 0.974, p < 0.001), identifying seven components explaining 59.70% of variance.
• The 62-item version exhibited high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.97).

Conclusions:

• The Slovenian version of the CAT-edu is a psychometrically sound and culturally sensitive tool for assessing caring behaviors in nursing education.
• The instrument can support faculty development, curriculum improvement, and institutional policies aimed at fostering caring competencies.
• Further research should include test-retest reliability and broader generalizability assessments.