Abstract
AimThe aim of the study was to determine the psychometric properties, construct validity and internal consistency of the Chinese language version of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form.DesignA methodological design was used.MethodsQuestionnaire data from 260 nursing students nearing graduation from 2 universities in China were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis, known‐group validity and internal consistency.ResultsThe confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model was acceptable, and the analyses for known‐group validity revealed statistically significant differences in all factors and the total scale of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form. Internal consistency revealed that Cronbach's alpha values exceeded 0.70 for all factors and the total scale. The Chinese language version of the Nurse Professional Competence scale short form has acceptable construct validity and good internal consistency.
Highlights
Professional competence is the ability to use a set of knowledge, skills and behaviours to successfully perform jobs, roles or responsibilities (World Health Organization, 2015)
The results indicated that the Nurse Professional Competence scale (NPC)-short form (SF)-C had acceptable construct validity and good internal consistency for the self-assessment of professional competence among Chinese nursing students
Work experience has been reported as an important factor influencing professional competence among registered nurses (Aqtash et al, 2017). These findings suggest that the NPC-SF-C has good discrimination performance and is a useful instrument for identifying the differences between the professional competence of nursing students with different practical experiences
Summary
Professional competence is the ability to use a set of knowledge, skills and behaviours to successfully perform jobs, roles or responsibilities (World Health Organization, 2015). Most of these instruments were developed without rigorous testing for psychometric properties, such as the Competency Evaluation Index System for nursing students (Xu & Sun, 2013), the Competency Evaluation Index for nursing interns (Huang et al, 2019), the Competency Evaluation Indicator System for new nurses (Xiao et al, 2020) and the Competency Evaluation System for specialized nurses (Bi et al, 2018; Huang et al, 2020; Li et al, 2018; Lu, 2020) These evaluation indexes could provide a reference for training and performance assessment in nursing education and clinical nursing, but their use in research is less valuable as long as validity not rigorously tested
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