Translation and validation of the Nurses Self-Concept Instrument for college-level nursing students in Taiwan

Nurturing a professional nursing self-concept is crucial in nursing education. To determine whether it has been achieved, a reliable and valid measurement tool is necessary. This study therefore aimed to translate the Nurses Self-Concept Instrument (NSCI), and then ascertain the content and construct validity, and test-retest and internal consistency reliability in the Chinese version of the NSCI (NSCI-C). A methodological design was conducted with 1239 nursing students of a university recruited as the sample frame and 540 randomly selected. The results showed the content validity index of 0.81 overall, alpha of 0.92 overall, and correlation coefficient of 0.87. The mean score of the NSCI-C was significantly higher in freshman than in senior (p < .01). The hypothesized four-factor model did not fit the data well. After restructuring, two factors were explored, with 69.04% explained variance. The findings suggest that the NSCI-C is reliable and valid in nursing students.