The Control over Nursing Practice Scale: Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the Instrument

The concept of control over nursing practice is associated with a healthy work environment and professional practice. Additionally, it is important to provide high quality, safe and cost effective nursing care and improve nursing care outcomes. To improve nurses' control over nursing practice, it is a necessity to assess nurses' control over nursing practice using psychometric measures To date, no suitable measurement tool has been available for assessing control over nursing practice in Turkey. The aim of this methodological study was to examine the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Control Over Nursing Practice Scale (CONP-S). Sample of this study consisted of 250 nurses from two hospitals. Data were collected through Nurses Data Sheet and CONP-S between the period of 23 February- 30 April 2015.Experts' viewpoints were used to determine language validity of the scale, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Model (SEM) were used to evaluate the construct validity. Cronbach's a reliability coefficient, item analysis, test-retest analysis were conducted to evaluate the reliability of the scale. Content Validity Index was found as 0.89. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the single factor structure and this single factor explained 43.776% of the total variance in nurses' control over nursing practice. This was confirmed (fit indices: x2/df=3.32, RMSEA= 0.097, NNFI= 0.95, CFI=0.96, GFI= 0.98) using structural equation modelling. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the scale was 0.94 and the test-retest reliability was 0.748 (p