Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of Spiritual Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ): A Methodological Study

Background Spiritual leadership has recently become the focus of attention for policy makers and top managers in Iran, especially in the health system. Due to the lack of culturally and academically accepted scales in Iran for measuring spiritual leadership, localization of a foreign scale in this field is necessary. Objectives This study aimed at investigating the validity and reliability of the Persian version of Fry’s spiritual leadership questionnaire (SLQ) among Iranian nurses. Methods The present cross sectional methodological research was conducted during year 2016. Participants were 400 nurses working in teaching hospitals affiliated to 3 universities of medical sciences in Tehran, Iran, who were selected using stratified sampling. A standard forward-backward translation procedure according to Wild et al. (2005) was used to translate the English version of the SLQ to Persian. The psychometric evaluation processes were achieved by face, content, and construct validity (confirmatory factor analysis). Reliability was examined using test-retest and Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency reliability. Results The SLQ showed good content validity (CVI = 0.94) ranging from 0.79 to 0.94 for each of the items. Construct validity evaluation by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) led to extraction of 8 factors from data was confirmed with acceptable values (factor-loading values ranged from 0.32 to 0.95). The original model was presented and incorporated in the CFA, indicating an acceptable fit for the model (root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.08; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.91; normed fit index (NFI) = 0.90; and incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.95). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.94 and for each component ranged from 0.71 to 0.86, indicating good internal consistency, and the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC = 0.92) showed good test-retest reliability. Conclusions The Persian version of Fry’s spiritual leadership questionnaire has acceptable psychometric properties for measuring spiritual leadership style of Iranian nurse managers and helps detect and predict the extent and scope of the application of this new type of leadership to improve organizational outcomes.