Developing the Scale of Parental Participation in Care: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and Examining the Scale's Psychometric Properties

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale of Parental Participation in Care: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and to examine the Scale's psychometric properties.

Methods: The draft scale' items were created through relevant literature reviews, focus group interviews with nurses, and content validity evaluations by experts. Study data were collected in the neonatal intensive care unit of a public hospital in Turkey from June 2019 to February 2020. The study participants were comprised of 205 parents with an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit. The Scale's content validity and construct validity were evaluated to determine the validity of the scale. Cronbach's alpha coefficient, item-total score correlations, and intraclass correlation were calculated to evaluate the Scale's reliability.

Results: Content validity index values of the draft form of the scale ranged from 0.93 to 1.00. The final scale consisted of 18 items. From the exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale structure comprised a single factor that accounted for 51.92% of the total variance. Concerning the reliability of the Scale, it was calculated that Cronbach's alpha level was 0.93; item total correlations ranged from 0.48 to 0.78; intraclass correlation level was 1.000.

Conclusion: It was found that the Parental Participation in Care Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was valid and reliable in this sample.

Keywords: Neonatal intensive care unit; Parental participation; Reliability; Validity.