Validity of " motivational factors of nurse's participation in continuing education programs" questionnaire

Holding the courses of in-service training is essential for nurses since they compose they highest proportion of hospital personnel and are responsible for the most hours of patient care; therefore, assessing the effectiveness of such courses depends on the presence of appropriate assessment tools. The aim of this study was validating the questionnaire of nurses’ motivation for attending in-service training courses. This descriptive study was carried out in 2008 on 276 nurses of three selected military hospitals in Tehran, Iran. The study cases were selected by random sampling method. The data collection tool was the questionnaire of nurses’ motivation for attending in-service training courses that contained 34 questions and was applied after confirming its psychometric properties such as reliability and validity. Data were analyzed by descriptive and analytical statistical methods using SPSS 18 software. Five of the 34 statements of the initial questionnaire were excluded after passing the face and content validity process and some phrases were also modified. The exploratory factor analysis was carried out on the remaining 29 questions. The KMO test came out to be 75% and Bartlett's test of sphericity was statistically significant (p<0.001, df=406, X2 =1694.442). The studied assessment tool has proper validity and reliability with 29 statements in five-choice Likert scale. This questionnaire is an appropriate tool for assessing the four important dimensions of in-service training.