A measure of perceived environmental uncertainty in hospitals

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the preliminary psychometric properties of the Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Questionnaire (PEUQ). Environmental uncertainty (EU) refers to times when within the organization unanticipated events and problems occur with frequency and cannot be predicted by members of the organization due to a lack of critical information. The PEUQ was designed as a measure of EU and was tested with 375 patient-care and nonpatient-care hospital employees. Internal consistency as measured by Cronbach's alpha was .81. Confirmatory factor analysis supported two of the PEUQ's hypothesized three factors: state and effect EU. These two factors accounted for 61.1% of the variance in subjects' level of uncertainty. Factor analysis failed to confirm response uncertainty as a subconstruct of EU. Contrasted group analysis found expected differences in the level of perceived EU between workers on different hospital units (t = -5.02, p < .001). This study provides evidence of the PEUQ's beginning reliability and validity as a measure of EU. Failure to identify response uncertainty as a salient subconstruct of EU warrants further exploration. The design of nursing care delivery structures (NCDS) to minimize EU first requires a means to measure hospital units' EU. The establishment of the PEUQ's psychometric soundness is antecedent to measuring EU and improving the efficacy of our NCDS.