Psychometric evaluation of the Chinese version of the Educational Leadership Scale for Nursing Students: a quantitative cross-sectional design

TL;DR

The study evaluated and validated a Chinese version of a leadership scale for nursing students, showing it is reliable and effective.

Contribution

The study provides a culturally adapted and psychometrically sound version of the ELS-NS for Chinese nursing students.

Findings

The Chinese ELS-NS has 19 items grouped into three factors with strong psychometric properties.

The scale demonstrated excellent reliability with Cronbach’s α of 0.940 and retest reliability of 0.926.

Confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit with indices like CFI and RMSEA meeting standards.

Abstract

The Educational Leadership Scale for Nursing Students (ELS-NS) was introduced and revised as part of this study, which also aimed to evaluate the scale’s validity and reliability in a Chinese cultural setting.

This study was a cross-sectional study conducted from March to October 2024. The research employed a multifaceted approach that included internal consistency testing, item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The sample comprised 508 nursing students from three medical universities located in Liaoning Province, China. Furthermore, a subset of 50 nursing students participated in a retest after a two-week interval to evaluate the reliability of the findings.

The Chinese version of the ELS-NS comprised 19 items, and exploratory factor analysis revealed three distinct factors that accounted for 67.251% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the adequacy of a three-factor model, as evidenced by the following fit indices: χ2/df = 0.112, RMSEA = 0.015, SRMR = 0.034, CFI = 0.997, TLI = 0.997, AGFI = 0.958 and PGFI = 0.758. This study conducted a comprehensive assessment of the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the ELS-NS, with all indicators meeting psychometric standards. Firstly, in terms of reliability, the scale demonstrates excellent stability and internal consistency. The Cronbach’s α coefficient for the total scale was 0.940, with Cronbach’s α coefficients for each dimension ranging from 0.841 to 0.943, and the composite reliability (CR) was above 0.7. The split-half reliability for the Chinese version of the ELS-NS was 0.764; the retest reliability was 0.926. Secondly, in terms of validity, the scale also demonstrates good measurement validity. The content validity index (CVI) of the scale was 0.84. The factor loadings for each item exceeded 0.6, the average variance extracted (AVE) was greater than 0.5, and the correlation coefficients were lower than the square root of the AVE, indicating robust convergent and discriminant validity.

The Chinese adaptation of the Educational Leadership Scale for Nursing Students (ELS-NS) has been demonstrated to be a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating nursing students’ inclination toward educational leadership across three dimensions: visionary leadership, instructional leadership, and scientific leadership. This assessment contributes to the enhancement of nursing education and practice by providing insights from various perspectives.

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