Developing an instrument to measure effective factors on clinical learning

Introduction: Although nursing students spend a large partof their learning period in the clinical environment, clinicallearning has not been perceived by its nature yet. To develop aninstrument to measure effective factors on clinical learning innursing students.Methods: This is a mixed methods study performed in 2 steps.First, the researchers defined “clinical learning” in nursingstudents through qualitative content analysis and designeditems of the questionnaire based on semi-structured individualinterviews with nursing students. Then, as the second step,psychometric properties of the questionnaire were evaluated usingthe face validity, content validity, construct validity, and internalconsistency evaluated on 227 students from fourth or highersemesters. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed, andthen, they were analyzed using Max Qualitative Data Analysisand all of qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS 14.Results: To do the study, we constructed the preliminaryquestionnaire containing 102 expressions. After determinationof face and content validities by qualitative and quantitativeapproaches, the expressions of the questionnaire were reduced to45. To determine the construct validity, exploratory factor analysiswas applied. The results indicated that the maximum variancepercentage (40.55%) was defined by the first 3 factors while therest of the total variance percentage (59.45%) was determinedby the other 42 factors. Results of exploratory factor analysis ofthis questionnaire indicated the presence of 3 instructor-staff,students, and educational related factors. Finally, 41 expressionswere kept in 3 factor groups. The α-Cronbach coefficient (0.93)confirmed the high internal consistency of the questionnaire.Conclusion: Results indicated that the prepared questionnairewas an efficient instrument in the study of the effective factors onclinical learning as viewed by nursing students since it involves41 expressions and properties such as instrument design based onperception and experiences of the nursing students about effectivefactors on clinical learning, definition of facilitator and preventivefactors of the clinical learning, simple scoring, suitable validityand reliability, and applicability in different occasions.Keywords: Learning; Clinical; Teaching; Nursing student