Aim: The overall purpose of the study was to develop an instrument to assess empowering nurse leader communication behaviours.
Background: Effective communication by nurse leaders promotes empowerment, yet communication assessments are often broad in nature without specifying precise behaviours.
Methods: An instrument development process was used to identify empowering nurse leader communication behaviours. Nurses working in United States military health care facilities (n = 240) provided responses to 47 pilot items, along with a 12-item psychological empowerment instrument to test for concurrent criterion validity.
Results: After review of item performance, 12 items were deleted. An exploratory factor analysis supported either a 2- or 3-factor model, with confirmatory factor analyses conducted to validate the underlying latent variables of empowering and limiting behaviours. The final nurse leader communication assessment consists of 2 factors consisting of 20 positive items (empowering subscale) and 15 negative items (limiting subscale).
Conclusion: The final 2-factor assessment supports the theoretical premise of the empowering and limiting behaviours. Further testing may provide further dimensional clarity.
Implications for nursing management: Use of the assessment can provide a basis for the development of training for individual nurse leaders or for facility nurse leaders as a collective.
Keywords: communication; empowerment; instrument development; military nursing; nursing leader.
© 2021 The Authors. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.