Designing and Psychometric Evaluation of Questionnaire of Influencing Factors of Nursing Students’ Clinical Judgment: A Mixed Method Study in an Iranian Context

Background Identification of the influencing factors of nursing students’ clinical judgment (CJ) facilitates the achievement of this important educational outcome. However, no tool is so far designed to assess it in the field of clinical education in Iran. Objectives The current study aimed at designing sequential exploratory mixed method in 3 phases. Methods It was a mixed method study. The 1st phase included reviewing literature, analyzing the relevant studies in Iran, and a qualitative content analysis. In the 2nd phase, validity and reliability of the tool were investigated. Results In the study, after assessing the face, content, and construct validity, 4 factors and 38 items obtained. Content validity ratio (CVR) ranged from 0.45 to 1.00 and content validity index (CVI) ranged from 0.6 to 1.00. Internal consistency of the total scale was good with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.92, and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.95 that indicated good stability. In the construct validity by exploratory factor analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index was higher than 0.90 and also the Bartlett test of sphericity was significant (P value < 0.001). Concerning the cumulative percent of the variance, the 4 factors determined 44.8% of the total variance. Conclusions The developed questionnaire in the current study was a suitable tool to assess the factors influencing the CJ of undergraduate nursing students.