Turkish validity and reliability study of compassion fatigue scale

Aim: This study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the validity and the reliability of Turkish language version of The Compassion Fatigue Self-Test- Scale developed by Dennis Portnoy. Method: The population of this methodologic type study was composed of 980 nurses who works in Izmir Katip Celebi University Ataturk Traning and Reserch Hospital, and sample was composed of 416 nurses who volunteered to participate in the study. Data belongs to study was gathered between January and May, 2016. For this study; Nurse Information Form, Compassion Fatigue Scale and Maslach Burnout Inventory was used as data gathering instruments. The validity of Compassion Fatigue Scale was evaluated by content validity, construct validity and known groups validity, and reliability was evaluated by standard error, internal consistency and time-invariance. The analysis of the data was made using the SPSS 22.0 package program and the LISREL 8.4 program. Findings: Validity of the scale tested by construct and content validity. Content and lingual validty of the scale was acceptable with 0.85 value. Explanatory factor analysis of Compassion Fatigue Scale explained 53,61% of factor analysis variance. KMO value for suitable for factor analysis was found 0,86 and Barlett Sphericity test χ2 was found 5025,330 (p<0,001). In goodness of fit indexes from CFA, goodness of fit CFA analysis performed with four factors had seemed to had better results and χ2 degree of freedom found significant with 2,79 (RMSA 0,066, NFI 0,85 and CFI 0,90). For validity level of scale Cronbach Alfa Coefficient was 0,87 and test-retest correlation coefficient of the scale was found 0,71 and statistically significant. Because factorial loads of cumulative items of scale was between 0,14-0,75, there were multiple subscales and differences between eigenvalues were very low it was decided to count of factors was four. Conclusion: Validity and reliability results of Turkish version of Compassion Fatigue Scale was considered acceptable. The validity and reliability of the scale might be studied in different groups.