Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Korean Nursing Work Environment Scale

Park, So-Hee; Kang, Jiyeon

Journal of Korean Critical Care Nursing 2015;8(1):50-61.
Published online June 30, 2015.

한국형 간호사 근무환경 측정도구 개발 및 평가

박소희, 강지연

¹김천의료원
²동아대학교 간호학과

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Korean Nursing Work Environment Scale

So-Hee Park, Jiyeon Kang

¹Kimcheon Medical Center
²Department of Nursing, Dong-A University

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study was to develop a valid tool for measuring the work environment of Korean nurses and test the validity and reliability of the instrument.
Methods
This is a methodological study for developing and testing a measurement tool. The conceptual framework for the tool was formed through a literature review and in-depth interviews with clinical nurses. 260 meaningful statements were derived through this process, and 59 of the primary items were generated out of these statements. On the basis of the content validity test, 41 items were selected for the preliminary tool. A total of 350 nurses from 7 hospitals responded to the preliminary questionnaire in October 2011.
Results
After the item analysis and the principal component analysis using varimax rotation methods, 11 items were deleted. Considering the conceptual framework and the scree plot, we extracted 4 factors from the final 30 items. These factors were organizational support, head nurse's leadership, support system, and relationship with coworkers, and their total variance was 54.4%. The value of Cronbach's ${alpha}$ of the final tool was 0.92.
Conclusion
The above findings revealed that the Korean Nursing Work Environment Scale (K-NWES) is an appropriate, valid, and reliable tool for evaluating the work environment of Korean nurses. Further research to perform a criterion validity test of the K-NWES is needed.

Key Words: Nurses, Work, Environment, Psychometrics, Factor analysis