Development of an instrument to measure quality of the bachelor degree in nursing

UNLABELLED Current questionnaires for assessing satisfaction of university students are not specific for nursing education. AIM The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure the quality of baccalaureate nursing education. METHOD Guidelines by DeVellis were adopted to develop the instrument. After expert review the initial 98 items identified were reduced to 63. The questionnaire was administered to 325 nursing students in Latium and Tuscany regions. A Delphi survey was carried out to validate the contents according to the students' opinions, expressed on a 5 point Likert scale. RESULTS Three-hundred-ten questionnaires were completed and considered for the present study. The mean age of the students was 25.4 years, 69.3% were females. Items which scored less than 2.5 on average at the Delphi survey were removed, as well as those which correlated less than 0.40 with the total score. Thus, 41 items were definitely considered for the Scale for Quality Evaluation of the Bachelor Degree in Nursing (SQEBDN). Reliability of the Scale resulted in a very high Cronbach's alpha (0.93). The construct validity was tested with factor analysis that showed 10 factors, while criterion-related (divergent) validity showed statistically significant correlations of all the items with those assessing the dissatisfaction for educational activities. Third year students as well as older students had the worst perception the quality of nursing education. CONCLUSIONS The SQEBDN, although requiring further studies, represents a useful instrument to measure the quality of the bachelor nursing degree.