Development of an Instrument to Measure Nursing Student Teamwork Skills

•Nurses must be able to demonstrate teamwork skills necessary for safe patient care.•Nurse educators must use psychometrically sound instruments for evaluation.•An eight-step process can be used to develop valid and reliable instruments.

BackgroundThe purpose of this project was to develop an instrument to measure nursing student teamwork skills in a simulated environment.MethodAn eight-step instrument development process was used that included literature review and evaluation of face/content validity and inter-rater reliability.ResultsPsychometric quantitative analysis of the final 11-item instrument included a scale content validity index of 0.98 and individual item content validity index scores ranging from 0.75 to 1.0 for the 11 items. Inter-rater reliability demonstrated consistency with interclass correlation coefficient of 0.836.ConclusionsAn eight-step process can be used by nurse educators to develop psychometrically sound instruments for use in student evaluation.