Developing and validating the nursing conscience perception questionnaire

Background: Conscience is the foundation of morality and influences private and professional life. Furthermore, conscience expresses the right image of right and wrong as well as good and bad. It helps nurses to hold their ethical integrity. How acts are led by conscience is different and how it is perceived by health care providers is unclear. Thus, the current study was carried out to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess perception of nursing conscience.

Methods: In a methodological study, primary items of our previous phenomenological research systematic review and previous questionnaire were merged to a single questionnaire. Content face and construct validity was confirmed reliability of the questionnaire was measured by split half and Cronbach α coefficient.

Results: Factor analysis determined the five factors of conscience perceived ethical conscience, supervisor conscience, protective conscience, caring conscience and reaction of conscience. Furthermore, the reliability and validity were achieved by statistical tests. Α Cronbach for internal consistency was 0.945 and Guttmann splitting half was r=0.917. Content validity index was more than 90% for each item.

Conclusion: The nursing conscience perception questionnaire had 24 items and 5 dimensions and had both validity and reliability, but it needs to be tested over and over to enhance its validity and reliability.