The Self as Role Model in Health Promotion Scale: Development and Testing

Historically, nurses have been expected to be role models of health promotion, conceptualized and operationalized narrowly and indirectly as the practice of healthy behaviors. The purpose of the current study was to develop and test an instrument (The Self as Role Model for Health Promotion [the SARMHEP]) to measure nurses’ perceptions of themselves as role models. Data were collected from nurses working in public health, nursing education, and general practice with a 56% return rate. A series of exploratory factor analyses elicited a five-factor solution that accounted for 44% of the variance and approximated the theoretical dimensions that guided the instrument’s development. Cronbach’s alpha for the total scale was .91. The new multidimensional SARMHEP was shown to have beginning validity and reliability.