Developing and validating a scale to study mentors' behaviour in nursing education

• Main Author: Chen, Yanhua
• Other Authors: Watson, Roger ; Hilton, Andrea
• Published: University of Hull 2015
• Subjects: 610.73; Health and social care
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.721521

Aim To study the conceptualization of mentors‘ behaviour and develop and validate a scale based on that to assess students‘ expectation and measure mentors‘ actual performance. Background In the field of clinical nursing education in China, mentors are struggling with student mentoring as no national guidelines exist and proper training is unavailable and nursing students are suffering from a low quality of learning and negative experiences. Design A mixed methods exploratory sequential design. Methods At the development and validation stage eleven steps were taken; mixed methodology was used, including focus group and cross-sectional survey with a large sample from China (n=669); in data analysis both classical test theory (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis) and item response theory (Mokken scale analysis) were conducted. Results Mentorship in nursing was conceptualized as a model with three correlated factors, i.e. professional development, facilitating learning and psychosocial support, which was guided by the theoretical framework generated through 46 studies and supported by exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and Mokken scale analysis. Conclusion This new scale based on this conceptulization is reliable, valid and scalable, which is supported by a wide range of psychometrics. It has shown good content validity according to review by nine mentor experts from the UK, stability over time, homogeneity in content, differentiability between extreme groups and hierarchical properties of mentors‘ behaviour in importance and reliability and moderate precision of ordering students‘ expectation. Therefore the mentorship in clinical nursing education is conceptualized as a three–correlated factor model and it is hierarchical in importance. This scale could find utility in nurinsg education in China.