Development and Testing of the Psychometric Properties of Thai Nurses’ Attitudes toward Alcohol-dependent Patients Scale

Abstract

Background: The attitudes of nurses can impact quality of patient care. Aim: To develop and test the psychometric properties of Thai nurses’ attitudes toward alcohol-dependent patients scale. Method: Instrument development research design was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 was focus group interviews to better understand the meaning and concept of attitudes of nurses toward alcohol-dependent patients, creating components of attitude and developing specific scale items. Phase 2 was the evaluation of psychometric properties of the scale through field-testing for construct validity and reliability. Data was analyzed using the Pearson correlation coefficient test, t-test, factor analysis technique with varimax rotation, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient test. Results: 28 items showed good item discrimination power. The item-total correlations showed medium to high levels of correlation with factor loadings ≥0.44, and displayed a total variance of 73.19%. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 5 components: nurses’ opinion alcohol-dependent patients in terms of behavior, beliefs, opinion on personalities, feeling about image, and opinion on care. The reliability coefficient alpha of Cronbach was 0.96. Conclusion: Nurses’ attitudes toward alcohol-dependent patients scale shows high validity, high reliability, and could be used as a scale of Thai nurses’ attitudes toward alcohol-dependent patients.