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Adequate measurement of psychological phenomena is a fundamental aspect of theory construction and validation. Forming composite scales from individual items has a long and honored tradition, although, for predictive purposes, the power of using individual items should be considered. We outline several fundamental steps in the scale construction process, including (1) choosing between prediction and explanation; (2) specifying the construct(s) to measure; (3) choosing items thought to measure these constructs; (4) administering the items; (5) examining the structure and properties of composites of items (scales); (6) forming, scoring, and examining the scales; and (7) validating the resulting scales.
The aim of this study was to develop the Nurse Competency Assessment Scale in Disaster Management (NCASDM) and to conduct psychometric evaluation.
Methods
It is a scale development study. Research data were collected between January and May 2023. In the sample of the study, as stated in the literature, it was aimed to reach at least 10 times the number of draft scale items (n = 600). The psychometric properties of the scale were tested with 697 nurses working in four different hospitals. A three-stage structure was used in the analysis of data: (1) creating the item pool, (2) preliminary evaluation of items, (3) refining of the scale and evaluation of psychometric properties. The content validity, construct validity, internal consistency, and temporal stability of the scale were evaluated according to the scale development guidelines.
Results
The scale items were obtained from online, semi-structured, in-depth individual interviews conducted with nurses who experienced disasters or worked in disasters. The content validity index of the scale was found to be 0.95. According to the exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale consisted of 43 items and two subscales, and the subscales explained 79.094% of the total variance. The compliance indices obtained as a result of confirmatory factor analysis were acceptable and at good levels.
Conclusions
The NCASDM was found to be a psychometrically valid and reliable measurement tool. It can be used to evaluate the competency of nurses related to disaster management.
Individuals with advanced cancer face the challenge of living meaningfully while also preparing for end of life. The ability to sustain this duality, called “double awareness,” may reflect optimal psychological adaptation, but no psychometric scale exists to measure this construct.
Objectives
The purpose of this study was to develop a novel scale to measure double awareness in patients living with advanced cancer.
Methods
Guided by best practices for scale development, this study addresses the first three of nine steps in instrument development, including domain clarification and item generation, establishment of content validity of the items, and pre-testing of the items with patients.
Results
Instrument development resulted in a 41-item measure with two dimensions titled “life engagement” and “death contemplation.” Items retained in the measure displayed face validity and were found to be both acceptable by patients and relevant to their lived experience.
Significance of results
The results of this scale development study will allow for full validation of the measure and future use in clinical and research settings. This novel measure of double awareness will have clinical utility and relevance in a variety of settings where patients with advanced cancer are treated.
In this chapter, we review the quantitative measurement of critical consciousness that has emerged within developmental and applied research over the last few decades. We provide a brief history and offer an overview of the current status of critical consciousness measurement. We also introduce four “phases” of critical consciousness measurement, which we refer to as (1) proxy measurement; (2) scale development; (3) scale expansion and (re)specification; and (4) scale refinement and adaptation. Due to their central role in critical consciousness measurement, we pay particular attention to instruments appearing in phase two, the scale development phase. After summarizing each phase, we identify opportunities for advancement and innovation in critical consciousness measurement and point to important new directions for measurement work in this area of scholarship – many of which are addressed more extensively in subsequent chapters of this volume.
Having a sense of calling toward one's work has key benefits for both the employee and the employer. Yet, little is known about whether and what kind of work climate facilitates employees' senses of calling, hindering efforts toward positive changes from managers and organizations. This research introduces the concept of ‘career calling climate’ and describes the development of a scale (i.e., Career Calling Climate Scale) to measure the level of support that a work unit provides for its employees' pursuit of a calling. We established the scale's validity and reliability using survey responses from participants of various occupations and age. To provide evidence of its predictive validity, we examined career calling climate's relation with career callings using a sample of 189 healthcare employees nested in 34 work units. Results suggested that career calling climate predicted individuals' career callings. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Low- and middle-income countries contribute to the majority of dementia and mild cognitive impairment cases worldwide, yet cognitive tests for diagnosis are designed for Western cultures. Language and cultural discrepancies mean that translated tests are not always reliable or valid. We propose a model for culturally adapting cognitive tests, one step of which is to assess the quality of any translation and cultural adaptation undertaken. We developed the Manchester Translation Evaluation Checklist (MTEC) to act as a tool for quality assessment and demonstrated its use by assessing a popular cognitive test that had been adapted.
Aims
Assess quality of the translation and cultural adaptation of the Urdu Mini-Mental State Examination developed for a Pakistani population.
Method
Two raters completed the MTEC for the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) Urdu and compared feedback. All authors were fluent in English and Urdu and familiar with Pakistani culture.
Results
Raters had 78.5% agreement across the MTEC. The MMSE Urdu was appropriately translated and retained grammar and verb tense, but three questions had spelling errors. Across 20 MMSE questions, 5 required further cultural adaptation because the questions were not understandable in daily use, comfortable to answer, relevant to the language and culture, and relevant to original concepts.
Conclusions
The MTEC highlighted errors in the MMSE Urdu and demonstrated how this tool can be used to improve it. Future studies could employ the MTEC to improve existing translated measures of health assessment, particularly cognitive tests, and act as a quality check when developing new adaptations of tests and before psychometric validation.
Safety voice helps organizations to identify safety issues timely and is critical to the long-term growth of the organization. Safety voice has become a hot research topic in organizational safety, and different scales have been developed. However, the unique cultural context in China has led to the need to redevelop safety voice measurement tools. In this paper, we developed an initial scale of safety voice for employees in Chinese organizational contexts fusing in-depth interviews and mature scales. The initial scale based on two samples (n1 = 205, n2 = 420) was revised and validated using item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability analysis to finalize the final scale. We finally found that the safety voice scale in Chinese organizational contexts contains two dimensions: promotive safety voice and prohibitive safety voice. The scale developed in this paper is a reliable tool to measure safety voice behavior of Chinese employees.
The idea of bringing democratization at the workplace has been present in management literature for decades. Literature has witnessed an increased interest of researchers on this topic, especially after the 2003 Academy of Management Annual Meeting conference having the theme “Democracy in a Knowledge Economy,” and August 2004 special issue of the Academy of Management Executive: “Democracy in and around Organizations.” To further explore this underpinned concept, the present study aims to refine and develop the organizational democracy construct. Using in-depth literature analysis published in last three decades on organizational democracy, ten dimensions (freedom, fairness, integrity, tolerance, shared responsibility, structure, transparency, knowledge sharing, accountability, and learning environment) were identified, leading to the development of its conceptual framework. By deploying established scale development procedures, the organizational democracy scale was developed, refined, and validated. The new organizational democracy scale consists of forty-five items consistent with theory and practice. The scale will assist future researchers and industrial practitioners in a deeper exploration of this construct and organizational managers for establishing, assessing, and improving democratic practices at their workplaces.
This study presents on the initial development and validation of the Resilience Scale for Older Adults (RSOA). This new measure is based on a theoretical model of resilience grounded in qualitative research conducted with older adults. The scale consists of four resilience protective factors with 11 underlying facets. The Intrapersonal factor consists of Perseverance and Determination, Self-Efficacy and Independence, Purpose and Meaning, and Positive Perspective. The Interpersonal factor consists of Sense of Community, Family Support, and Friend/Neighbour Support. The Spiritual factor consists of Faith and Prayer, and the Experiential factor consists of Previous Adversity and Proactivity. The findings of three independent studies using older adult samples support the four-factor, 11-facet structure of the RSOA. Results also provide promising initial reliability and validity information, and analysis of gender invariance suggests that the factor structure is comparable across men and women. Implications for the applicability of the RSOA in research and clinical settings are discussed.
The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-53) was originally developed as a shorter alternative to the Symptom Checklist-90R, which captures a breath of psychopathology. Subsequently, the BSI-53 was further streamlined to an 18-item scale assessing psychological distress in terms of somatization (S), anxiety (A), and depression (D) – also known as the “SAD Triad”. The BSI-18 has been shown to have good validity in the German general population.
Objectives
The objective of the present study was to further improve the ease of use of the BSI as a clinical screening tool by developing a reliable and valid 9-item version of the BSI-18.
Methods
A representative sample of the German general population (N=2,516) was surveyed for demographic information and completed a variety of questionnaires, including the BSI-18. Confirmatory factor analyses, item-level statistics, and correlations were used to select three rather heterogeneous items for each subscale and confirm the model fit.
Results
The proposed 3-factor model of the BSI-9, corresponding to the SAD triad, demonstrated a good model fit. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) was .87 for the total scale, .72 for the somatisation scale, .79 for the depression scale, and .68 for the anxiety scale. Each of the subscales were significantly related to the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 and Hopkins Symptoms Checklist-25 in the hypothesized direction.
Conclusions
The BSI-9 provides researchers and clinicians with a brief, effective, and valid tool to screen for anxiety, depression, and somatization, thus preventing potential overload for research participants and flagging patients who might need further clinical assessment.
Drawing on Wales, Monsen, and McKelvie's (2011, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(5), 895–923) model of entrepreneurial orientation pervasiveness and the strong culture hypothesis (Denison, 1984, Organization Dynamics, 13, 4–22), this study investigates how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) strength, defined as the level of agreement in the shared perceptions of EO, serves as a boundary condition of the EO–firm performance relationship. Four field studies provide evidence for a valid and reliable 10-item multidimensional measure of entrepreneurial orientation, the EO-10, which in turn, may be used to assess EO strength. We establish content and construct validity of the EO-10 (study 1; n = 447 employees), criterion-related validity with revenue growth and sales growth (study 2; n = 412 employees in 43 profit centers), and convergent validity with Covin and Slevin's (1989, Strategic Management Journal, 10, 75–87) 9-item measure (study 3; n = 291 employees). Finally, in study 4 (n = 853 employees nested in 22 organizations), we demonstrate the interactive effects of EO and EO strength on profit growth and revenue growth. In sum, this study provides conceptual and empirical evidence for the importance of EO strength as a moderator of the EO–firm performance relationship.
Personal agency is a variable which potentially facilitates personal recovery in people with serious mental illness. This study aimed to develop a new brief measure for subjective personal agency that can be completed by people with serious mental illness.
Methods
Two focus group interviews were first conducted with 11 people with schizophrenia to understand the fundamental components of subjective personal agency for people with serious mental illness living in the community. One group comprised six people with schizophrenia living in the community, while the other consisted of five people with schizophrenia working as peer-support workers. We then developed scale items through collaboration with people with schizophrenia and qualitative analysis (stage 1). A cross-sectional survey was then conducted to test the psychometric properties of the new scale among service users with schizophrenia in 18 assertive community treatment teams (stage 2). Factor validity was tested via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). We evaluated convergent validity with the Boston University Empowerment Scale (BUES), divergent validity with the global assessment of functioning (GAF), internal consistency, and test–retest reliability.
Results
Seven items were included in the scale at stage 1. In stage 2, 195 participants completed this scale. EFA revealed a one-factor model with five items. CFA indicated good model fit (χ2 statistics [CMIN] = 8.445, df = 5 (CMIN/df = 1.689), p = 0.133, comparative fit index = 0.974, Tucker–Lewis fit index = 0.949, root mean square error of approximation = 0.077 and standardised root mean squared residual = 0.042). The new scale was significantly correlated with total BUES score (r = 0.526, p < 0.001), but not with GAF score. Cronbach's α for internal consistency was 0.79, and intra-class correlation coefficient for test–retest reliability was 0.70.
Conclusion
We developed a new, five-item Subjective Personal Agency scale (SPA-5) that can be completed by people with serious mental illness. Further studies are needed to confirm the results outside Japan.
High-quality, informative research in clinical psychology depends on the use of measures that have sound psychometric properties. Reliance upon psychometrically poor measures can produce results that are misleading both quantitatively and conceptually. This chapter articulates the implications that psychometric quality has for clinical research, outlines fundamental psychometric principles, and presents recent trends in psychometric theory and practice. Specifically, this chapter discusses the meaning and importance of measures’ dimensionality, reliability, and validity, and outlines the diverse methods for evaluating those important psychometric properties. In doing so, it highlights the utility of procedures and perspectives such as confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory structural equation modeling, classical test theory, item response theory, and contemporary views on validity. It concludes with a brief comment about the process of creating and refining clinical measures. The chapter’s ultimate goal is to enhance researchers’ ability to produce high-quality and informative clinical research.
This article presents the development of an instrument measuring relationship satisfaction, based on the theory that separates ‘relationship quality’ from ‘satisfaction’ concerning the semantic meaning of the concepts, and to evaluate psychometric properties of the new measure. Two studies were conducted in order to investigate the psychometric properties of the new scale, with 372 and 1,185 participants taking part in Study 1 and Study 2 respectively. Results revealed that the new scale has two-factor structure, adequate internal consistency reliability, and convergent, discriminant and known-groups validity.
Morphological awareness (MA) is an important predictor of reading outcomes in different languages. The consonantal root is a salient feature of Arabic lexical structure and critical to MA. The goals of this study were to (a) develop a measure of root awareness (RA) as one dimension of MA in Arabic, and (b) validate the RA measure by predicting reading outcomes in an Arabic population. A set of RA items was administered to 194 Arabic-speaking third-grade children. A one-factor model was specified using confirmatory factor analysis to examine the model fit of the RA measure. A structural equation model was then developed to examine the relation between the RA measure and important reading outcome measures including word reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The results of these analyses indicated good model fit, and the RA measure accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in the outcomes. The establishment of the RA measure is an important preliminary step to efficiently assessing MA in Arabic and could serve as an integral tool for studying reading development.
The notion of happiness at work is becoming increasingly important for human resource management research. Despite the widespread existence of different constructs that capture positive attitudes, a comprehensive measure of individual-level happiness is necessary. Starting from Fisher’s conceptualisation of happiness at work, Salas-Vallina, Alegre, and Fernández developed a 31-item scale to measure happiness at work. This scale accurately captures the different dimensions of happiness in the workplace context. However, it is a long scale. Shorter scales provide major improvements in efficiency and efficacy. Our study, conducted with two diversified samples, conceptualises and measures happiness at work. Following the steps suggested by Stanton, Sinar, Balzer, and Smith and Kacmar, Crawford, Carlson, Ferguson, and Whitten, we provide a shortened version of the happiness at work scale, while maintaining its psychometric properties. We argue that this new measurement scale presents a high statistical potential to widely capture positive attitudes at work and opens undeveloped research possibilities.
Inconsistent condom use in young people is related to the perceived barriers to their use. The psychometric properties and factor structure of the new Condom Use Barriers Scale for Adolescents (CUBS-A) are analyzed. Concurrent validity was assessed by the Attitude towards condom use subscale of the validated HIV-AS test and the percentage of condom use variable. A total of 629 Spanish adolescents whose mean age was 15.17 (SD = 1.09; 51.5% boys) participated. Exploratory factor analysis supported a 15–item instrument with four factors: negotiation skills, perceived feelings, negative aspects of condoms, and disruption of the sexual experience, which explained 41.89% of the total variance (KMO = .84; χ2 = 1071.93; p < .001). The results show high internal consistency (α = .86) and a good fit of the data to the model (NNFI = .93; CFI = .95; IFI = .95; RMSEA = .04). Its total score and most of its factors show acceptable correlation with the percentage of condom use, values that support the criterial validity (p ≤ .05). Gender differences were found in most subscales (p ≤ .001). The CUBS-A is a valid and reliable new instrument for assessing perceived barriers in adolescents for using condoms to protect themselves during sexual intercourse.
Recently, there emerged a theory of collective psychological ownership – an intersubjective sense of possession for different objects within the work and organizational context (e.g., work space). This shared mind-set has been cast as having the potential to explain a variety of collective, work-related attitudes, and actions. Preventing scientific inquiry into this phenomenon is the absence of an instrument for the measurement of this construct. The purpose of this work was the development and validation of such an instrument. To this end, work with a panel of judges and three sequentially conducted field studies was undertaken. Construct validation evidence (e.g., content, discriminant, nomological, and incremental validity) for an instrument for the assessment of collective psychological ownership is provided.
The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid scale that broadly measures knowledge about palliative care among non-healthcare professionals.
Method:
An initial item pool of 38 true/false questions was developed based on extensive qualitative and quantitative pilot research. The preliminary items were tested with a community sample of 614 adults aged 18–89 years as well as 30 palliative care professionals. The factor structure, reliability, stability, internal consistency, and validity of the 13-item Palliative Care Knowledge Scale (PaCKS) were assessed.
Results:
The results of our study indicate that the PaCKS meets or exceeds the standards for psychometric scale development.
Significance of results:
Prior to this study, there were no psychometrically evaluated scales with which to assess knowledge of palliative care. Our study developed the PaCKS, which is valid for assessing knowledge about palliative services in the general population. With the successful development of this instrument, new research exploring how knowledge about palliative care influences access and utilization of the service is possible. Prior research in palliative care access and utilization has not assessed knowledge of palliative care, though many studies have suggested that knowledge deficits contribute to underutilization of these services. Creating a scale that measures knowledge about palliative care is a critical first step toward understanding and combating potential barriers to access and utilization of this life-improving service.
Quality of life and well-being of older patients in chronic care facilities is often determined by their relationships with nurses. The authors developed and tested a scale to assess patients’ views of what matters most when relating to nurses. Based on the humanistic nursing theory by Paterson and Zderad (1988), 69 items were created and tested with a sample of 40 patients, resulting in refinement of a scale with 24 items. This scale was factor analysed on responses from 249 patients residing in five facilities in Ontario, Canada. The Humanistic Relationship Importance Scale demonstrated strong internal consistency, stability, and reliability with a five-factor solution (α = .87). Construct validity was supported through factual identification. This scale is a valid measure of patients’ perspectives of a nurse-patient relationship in chronic care and can be used to measure health professionals’ relationships with their older patients and evaluate interventions to enhance relational care.