Background: Nursing students' perceptions about academic dishonesty directly affects their conduct in the clinical environment. Hence, it is crucial to systematically observe this phenomenon and develop appropriate instruments for assessing their perception of dishonest behaviors.
Purpose: To translate and cross-culturally adapt the "Nursing Student Perceptions of Dishonesty Scale" into the Croatian language and assess its validity and reliability.
Methods: The study was performed in April 2018 in one Croatian university, 733 BSc and MSc nursing students from all Croatian counties participated in the study.
Results: Nursing experts confirmed the high degree of content validity of the instrument and suggested the exclusion of 13 items. The final version of the translated instrument, loaded on 11 instead of 9 factors, where subscale Cheating and Cutting corners loaded on two distinct factors. Results of internal consistency by subscale and overall (Cronbach α > 0.7 and test-retest reliability (p < 0.001)) indicate a high level of instrument reliability.
Conclusion: The translated instrument indicates a high level of reliability and validity in assessing the students' perception of academic dishonest behavior in the Croatian socio-cultural context. The identified linguistic, cultural and organizational differences provide more insight regarding understanding what this population perceives in terms of academic dishonesty.
Keywords: Academic dishonesty; Instrument; Nursing students; Perceptions; Translation.
Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.