The integrated nurse self-leadership and caring scale: development and psychometric evaluation

: Nurses require both self-leadership and caring capacities to deliver safe, compassionate, and adaptive care. Self-leadership refers to an individual's ability to regulate thoughts, behaviors, and motivation to achieve professional goals. Existing instruments typically measure these constructs separately, limiting holistic assessment.

: We aimed to develop and psychometrically evaluate the Integrated Nurse Self-Leadership and Caring Scale.

: A methodological study was conducted in two phases: instrument development and psychometric testing. A 30-item pool was generated from self-leadership and caring theories and refined through expert review and cognitive debriefing. Data were collected from 169 Indonesian nurses and final-year professional nursing students. Internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach's α, while construct validity was examined using exploratory factor analysis (EFA).

: Respondents had a mean age of 34.6 years (standard deviation = 8.9), with 72.8% employed as professional nurses. Cronbach's α values ranged from 0.68 to 0.87 across six domains, and the overall scale demonstrated excellent reliability (α = 0.92). The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was 0.887, and Bartlett's test was significant (p < .001). EFA supported a six-factor structure, accounting for 64.0% of total variance, with 29 of 30 items meeting the loading threshold.

: We found that the Integrated Nurse Self-Leadership and Caring Scale demonstrated promising reliability and construct validity among Indonesian nurses, providing preliminary evidence of its usefulness for assessing the integration of self-leadership and caring within this context. Future researchers should extend validation through confirmatory and predictive analyses.