TITLE:
Development and psychometric evaluation of the radiographers’ competence scale
AUTHORS:
Bodil T. Andersson, Lennart Christensson, Bengt Fridlund, Anders Broström
KEYWORDS:
Competence Scale; Instrument Development; Management; Nursing; Psychometric Evaluation; Radiographer; RCS
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Nursing,
Vol.2 No.2,
June
29,
2012
ABSTRACT: Assessing the competence of registered radiographers’ clinical work is of great importance because of the recent change in nursing focus and rapid technological development. Self-assessment assists radiographers to validate and improve clinical practice by identifying their strengths as well as areas that may need to be developed. The aim of the study was to develop and psychometrically test a specially designed instrument, the Radiographers Competence Scale (RCS). A cross sectional survey was conducted comprising 406 randomly selected radiographers all over Sweden. The study consisted of two phases; the development of the instrument and evaluation of its psychometric properties. The first phase included three steps: 1) construction of the RCS; 2) pilot testing of face and content validity; and 3) creation of a web-based 54-item questionnaire for testing the instrument. The second phase comprised psychometric evaluation of construct validity, internal consistency reliability and item reduction. The analysis reduced the initial 54 items of the RCS to 28 items. A logical two-factor solution was identified explaining 53.8% of the total variance. The first factor labelled “Nurse initiated care” explained 31.7% of the total variance. Factor 2 labelled “Technical and radiographic processes” explained 22.1% of the total variance. The scale had good internal consistency reliability, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87. The RCS is a short, easy to administer scale for capturing radiographers’ competence levels and the frequency of using their competence. The scale was found to be valid and reliable. The self-assessment RCS can be used in management, patient safety and quality improvement to enhance the radiographic process.