Adaptation of the "high-performance work systems scale" into Turkish: Avalidity and reliability study

This methodological study was performed to determine whether the Turkish version of the High Performance Work Systems Scale developed by Anthea Zacharatos in Canada in 2001 is a valid and reliable tool for nurses in Turkey. The study was conducted between November 2016 and January 2017 in four private and one foundation university hospitals in Istanbul. The sample consisted of 450 nurses having been working in these hospitals for at least one year. The study data were collected using the "Descriptive Characteristics Form", and "High Performance Work Systems Scale" consisting of 51 items. In the data analysis, the content validity index, Pearson correlation coefficient, Cronbach's alpha, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and independent-samples t-test were used. The scale was translated from English into Turkish considering international scale adaptation standards and evaluated by ten experts in terms of content. The scale was pilot tested with 20 nurses. The content validity index (CVI) of the scale was 0.97. In the item-total correlation analysis, nine items whose correlation coefficient was less than 0.20 were excluded from the scale. The reliability coefficients of the remaining items ranged between 0.27 and 0.60. The stability of the scale over time was tested with 20 nurses twice at a 15-day interval. There was no significant difference between the two measurements (t = 29, p>.05). The results of the Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin and Barlett's tests performed before the exploratory factor analysis conducted to check the construct validity of the scale revealed that the sample was suitable for the test. In the exploratory factor analysis, five items with a factor loading of <0.40 were removed and the remaining items were included in six sub- dimensions. Given the content of the scale items and the sub-dimensions of the original scale, the six sub-dimensions were named as "Leadership (1st sub- dimension)", "Autonomy, stay at work" (2nd sub-dimension), "Recruitment" (3rd sub- dimension), "Employee performance" (4th sub-dimension), "Education" (5th sub- dimension) and "Payments" (6th sub-dimension).In the confirmatory factor analysis of the 37-item and 6-sub-dimension scale, the path coefficients (factor loadings) of the items with their own dimension ranged between 0.31 and 0.84. The goodness of fit of the model determined in the confirmatory factor analysis was at an acceptable level. In the internal consistency analysis of the scale and its sub-dimensions, the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was 0.88 for the overall scale and ranged from 0.56 to 0.85 for the sub-dimensions. The results of the Turkish validity and reliability study of the High Performance Work Systems Scale indicated that the scale is a valid and reliable tool and thus can be administered to nurses in Turkey. This scale is an important tool aimed at measuring nurses' perception of institutional performance in health institutions. Nurse Managers and researchers can benefit from this scale to assess the institutional performance.