The development of a nurse stress checklist from English to Chinese version

Work stress has been identified as a relevant problem in the field of professional nursing. Many instruments measuring nurse work stress have already been developed in the United States. The Nurse Stress Checklist (NSC), a Likert-type questionnaire with 47 items, was selected for adaptation into the Chinese language from among these instruments, following a literature review and a comparison with the author's personal nursing experiences. The processes of developing the validity of an NSC Chinese version--content validity, concurrent validity, and construct validity--were conducted. In this pilot study, 13 Chinese nurses who had previously worked in the United States and who were fluent in both Chinese and English filled out the NSC in both the Chinese and English versions. Pearson's correlation was performed to build up concurrent validity. Next, 138 Chinese nurses were randomly selected from three medical centers in Taiwan to be participants in the major study. They filled out the NSC in the Chinese version, and a factor analysis was used to build up construct validity. Four factors were extracted: nonproductive reactions, satisfactory responses, professional concerns, and falling behind. A comparison was made of these four factors with the five factors of the NSC in the English version.