Translation of the Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale (MCSS) into Danish and a preliminary psychometric validation

Abstract

A central challenge for empirical research of clinical supervision is how to measure the effectiveness of clinical supervision. The Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale (MCSS) measures supervisees' perception of the effectiveness of clinical supervision. The aims of this paper were to account for the translation of the MCSS from English into Danish and to present a preliminary psychometric validation of the Danish version of the scale. Methods included a formal translation/back-translation procedure and statistical analyses. The sample consisted of MCSS scores from 139 Danish mental health nursing staff members. The total MCSS score had good internal consistency, but the analyses identified a number of reliability and consistency issues. The results were compared with other translations of the MCSS and with the reduced version of the MCSS, the MCSS-26. The discussion indicated that MCSS theoretically refers to a broad conception of supervision, which includes supervision practices ranging from highly formalized events to more frequent ad hoc sessions. The MCSS's intention to measure perceptions of supervisees from this variety of practices may be problematic, and it is suggested that a further reduction of the type of practices MCSS currently aims at measuring could be beneficial.