Development of the attitude scale towards specialization in nursing

The aim of this research is to develop an attitude scale towards specialization in nursing. Participants of the methodological type of research; Academic nurses who are teaching staff in the nursing department throughout Turkey, clinician nurses working at Kırşehir Training and Research Hospital, and students studying in the undergraduate and graduate programs of nursing at Kırşehir Ahi Evran University. Data collection was carried out in two stages. In the first stage, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with 20 people from the sample group and an item pool was created in line with these interviews. In the second stage; Validity and reliability analyzes were performed for scale development. The created 55-item item pool was presented to expert opinions, and as a result of the analyzes, five items were removed from the draft scale and data were started to be collected in the sample group with 50 items. A total of 634 people participated in the research. 25.6% of the participants are academicians, 33.9% are clinicians and 40.5% are student nurses. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) coefficient before the explanatory factor analysis of the Attitudes towards Specialization in Nursing Scale was found to be 0.97, and the result of the Barlett test =6311.598, p<0.001. After factor analysis, a single factor structure with an eigenvalue of 12.5 emerged, which explained 69.9% of the total variance. As a result of explanatory factor analysis, factor loads of the single factor scale were found to be between 0.590 and 0.915. In the results of confirmatory factor analysis, the fit indices of the scale were determined as /SD 2.287, GFI 0.90, CFI 0.97, NFI 0.95, NNFI 0.97, AGFI 0.87, RMSEA 0.064, and factor loads of the scale items were found to be between 0.69 and 0.95. The CR value of the scale was calculated as 0.98 and the AVE value as 0.73 in the analyzes for the convergent validity. In the analyzes made for 27% lower - 27% upper group comparisons; The mean score of the subgroup of 27% was 48.92±19.41, the mean score of the upper group of 27% was 87.84±1.91 and the t value between the two groups was -26.08 (p<0.001). All questions in the scale are scored straight, there are no reverse scored questions. The score that can be obtained from the scale is between 18 and 90, and the mean total score of the scale is 74.37±16.66. As the score obtained from the scale increases, the attitude towards the nursing profession also increases. The total Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale is 0.97. In the item-total score analysis, the correlation coefficients of the scale items with the scale total score ranged between 0.556 and 0.899 (p< 0.001). As a result of the analyzes made for the test-retest; the mean score of the first measurement was found to be 79.33±8.51 and the mean score of the second measurement was found to be 79.90±8.61. There was no statistically significant difference between the first and second application scale mean scores (t: 0.834, p>0.05). In the correlation analysis between the scale scores of the two measurements, there is a statistically significant, very strong, positive relationship (r=0.906, p<0.001). The intraclass correlation coefficient between the scale total scores of the two applications performed with a four-week interval was found to be excellent and statistically significant (ICC: 0.951, p<0.001). As a result of the analyzes made to obtain the two-half test reliability coefficient; The cronbach alpha coefficient of the first half of the database was 0.95, the cronbach's alpha coefficient of the second half was 0.95 and the Guttman coefficient was 0.96. The correlation between the two halves is very strongly positive (r:0.93). It was determined that there was no response bias in the scale (Hotelling T²=350.961, p<0.001). As a result, the Attitude Scale towards Nursing Specialization is a valid and reliable tool to measure nurses' attitudes towards specialization.