Psychometric Testing of the Newborn Skin Assessment Attitude Scale in Neonatal ICU Nurses

OBJECTIVE To develop a Newborn Skin Assessment Attitude Scale (NSAAS) for neonatal ICU (NICU) RNs. METHODS The study was conducted with 326 nurses working in NICUs in three cities in Turkey. The researchers evaluated the content and construct validity and reliability of the scale with item-Total score correlation analysis, the test-retest method, and calculating the Cronbach α reliability coefficient. RESULTS The content validity index of the scale ranged between 0.87 and 1.00. Prior to exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin coefficient of the NSAAS was 0.976, and the Bartlett test of sphericity result was χ2 = 15,337.052 (P <.001). The scale was constructed with 35 items with factor loads greater than 0.40 and three subdimensions. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the fit indices of the NSAAS were χ2/df = 3.57, root mean square error of approximation = 0.08, normed fit index = 0.98, non-normed fit index = 0.98, comparative fit index = 0.98, and standardized root mean square residual = 0.05. The overall reliability coefficient of the NSAAS was α =.978. The test-retest coefficients of correlation were r = 0.558 for the overall scale and r = 0.615, r = 0.504, and r = 0.598 for the Awareness, Practice, and Avoidance subdimensions, respectively. In addition, no statistically significant difference was observed when comparing the test-retest mean scores for the total scale and the subdimensions (P >.05). CONCLUSIONS The NSAAS can be reliably used for measuring NICU nurses' attitudes toward newborn skin assessment.