Construction and reliability and validity of a scale for assessing psychiatric nurses' knowledge， attitude and practice towards the use of protective restraint

Abstract

BackgroundThe existing tools in China for assessing psychiatric nurses' knowledge， attitude and practice towards the use of protective restraint do not sufficiently consider the specialty in psychiatric practice， and the scale items are somewhat cumbersome to use， which together restrict their further promotion and application. Accordingly， there is an urgent need for developing a more scientific assessment tool.ObjectiveTo construct a scale for assessing psychiatric nurses' knowledge， attitude and practice towards the use of protective restraint and to verify its reliability and validity， so as to provide a generic tool for the assessment.MethodsBased on the theoretical framework of the knowledge-attitude-practice model， the preliminary scale was formed through systematic literature review， qualitative interview and Delphi method. From July to December 2021， a stratified sampling was utilized to select 729 psychiatric nurses from tertiary， secondary and primary （including unclassified medical institutions and grassroots hospitals） psychiatric hospitals in Guangdong Province. The formal scale was developed through item analysis， exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The validity of the scale was evaluated by content validity and structure validity， and the reliability was verified by procedures including Cronbach's α coefficient， test-retest reliability， and split-half reliability.ResultsA total of 12 items of three dimensions （knowledge， attitude， practice） were included in the scale for assessing psychiatric nurses' knowledge， attitude and practice towards the use of protective restraint. The scale-level content validity index （S-CVI） was 0.941， and the item-level content validity index （I-CVI） ranged from 0.812 to 1.000. Exploratory factor analysis extracted three common factors， and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 62.948%. The confirmatory factor yielded adequate fit. Cronbach's α coefficient was found to be 0.887 for the scale， 0.819 for knowledge dimension， 0.842 for attitude dimension， and 0.831 for practice dimension. The split-half reliability and test-retest reliability for the scale were 0.712 and 0.922， respectively.ConclusionThe scale shows satisfactory reliability and validity， which can be used to assess psychiatric nurses' knowledge， attitude and practice towards the use of protective restraint. ［Funded by Guangdong Clinical Teaching Base Teaching Reform Research Project （number， 2021JD119）］

Keywords

• psychiatric nurses
• protective restraint
• knowledge， attitude and practice
• scale construction
• reliability
• validity