Nurses’ knowledge, skills and personal attributes for competent health education practice: An instrument development and psychometric validation study

Abstract Aim To develop and psychometrically test the Nurse Health Education Competence Instrument for assessing nurses’ knowledge, skills and personal attributes concerning competent health education practice. Design A psychometric instrument development and validation study. Methods A four‐step approach was used: Step 1) operational definition based on an up‐to‐date concept analysis and experts’ judgement; step 2) item generation and content validation by expert panel and target population; step 3) item analysis based on acceptability, internal consistency and face validity; and step 4) psychometric evaluation based on construct validity, criterion validity, internal consistency and stability, conducted from January ‐February 2019 with 458 hospital‐care nurses. Results The operational framework and expert groups showed good content validity, resulting in the first version. From the initial 88‐item pool, 58 items were retained after item analysis. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three scales concerning the cognitive (three‐factor solution with 23 items), psychomotor (two‐factor solution with 26 items) and affective‐attitudinal (one‐factor solution with nine items) competency domains, which respectively accounted for 58%, 53% and 54% of the variance. Known‐group study demonstrated significant differences by years working in the service and training received in health education, providing evidence for the measure's sensitivity. The three scales correlated positively with the criterion variable. Overall Cronbach alphas for the cognitive, psychomotor and affective‐attitudinal scales were 0.95, 0.95 and 0.90, respectively. Intraclass correlation coefficients were >0.70. Conclusions The newly developed Nurse Health Education Competence Instrument is an original and tested self‐reporting psychometric tool, being the first to identify nurses’ knowledge, skills and attributes necessary for planning and assessing health education practice competency. Impact The instrument permits measurable insights into nurses’ perceptions regarding their health education competence and related educational needs. This study provides a valid and specific learning tool that is appropriate to use both in clinical practice and in nursing education programmes.