Abstract

Background: We developed a supplemental version of the Psychiatric Nurse Job Stressor Scale (PNJSS) to assess job stressors related to difficulty in supporting the future lives of patients, physical environment of the psychiatric ward and medical accidents in the psychiatric ward and tested its reliability and validity.
Methods: We made a questionnaire of 11 items and analyzed the responses from 302 psychiatric nurses (PNs).The brief job stress questionnaire and PNJSS were used to confirm the validity of the supplemental version of PNJSS.The factors were extracted by the exploratory factor analysis. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and the test-retest reliability coefficients (Pearson’s correlation coefficients) were calculated for scale reliability. Forconvergent and predictive validity, Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated. The goodness-of-fit (factorial validity) was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis.
Results: Using factor analysis on 11 items, we extracted 10 items in three categories of factors: (1) estimate of situation for psychiatric nursing, (2) physical environment of the psychiatric ward and (3) medical accidents in the psychiatric ward. For scale reliability, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.620-0659 and the test-retest reliability coefficient was r=0.520-0.797 (p<0.01). For scale validity, a significant correlation was observed with external variables for the total scale and almost all subscales, confirming the convergent and predictive validity of the Supplemental version. For factorial validity, strong goodness-of-fit was observed for data from the factor model, with χ2/df ratio=1.808, Good of Fit Index=0.965, Adjusted Good of Fit Index=0.940, Comparative Fit Index=0.934 and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation=0.052.
Conclusion: The PNJSS (Supplemental version) has strong reliability and validity with three factors and 10 items. Using the Supplemental version with the PNJSS we previously developed may enable a more detailed assessment of stress in PNs.