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. 2023 Dec 30:16:16.
doi: 10.18502/jmehm.v16i16.14615. eCollection 2023.

Psychometric evaluation of the Persian version of the perception of conscience questionnaire in Iranian nurses

Seyed Alireza Hasani  1 , Roghieh Nazari  1 , Hooman Shahsavari  2 , Tayeb Ramim  3 , Kurosh Jodaki  4
Affiliations

Psychometric evaluation of the Persian version of the perception of conscience questionnaire in Iranian nurses

Seyed Alireza Hasani et al. J Med Ethics Hist Med. .

Abstract

Conscience is defined as the cornerstone of ethics and is considered a valuable asset. There is, however, little evidence about how Iranian nurses perceive conscience. The purpose of this study was to psychometrically evaluate the Persian version of the Perception of Conscience Questionnaire (PCQ) in Iranian nurses. In this cross-sectional and descriptive study, a psychometric evaluation of the PCQ was conducted on Iranian nurses in 2022. A total of 300 nurses participated in this study to validate the PCQ. At first, the initial translation and determination of face validity was done, and content validity was assessed using the Content Validity Index and Content Validity Ratio. Reliability was determined by intra-class correlation coefficient and Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The construct validity of the PCQ was determined by exploratory factor analysis, which led to the extraction of five factors of warning signal, valuable asset, spiritual power, burden and conscience outcomes from the initial 14 factors of the questionnaire. Reliability of the whole questionnaire was calculated to be 0.80 using Cronbach's alpha. While an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.58 indicated average stability, the five-factor construct of the PCQ showed good validity and reliability. Therefore, our findings proved that this tool is suitable for assessing Iranian nurses' perception of conscience.

Keywords: Conscience; Ethics; Nurse; Psychometrics..

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this research project and paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scree plot for determining the number of appropriate factors.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Structural equation modeling, plot of standardized coefficients of path for the five-factor structure.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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