Nursing Practice Models (NPMs) represent the structural and contextual feat
ures that exist within any group practice of nursing. Currently, measuremen
t of NPMs relies on costly and nonreproducible global iudgments by experts.
Quantitative measurement techniques are needed to provide a useful evaluat
ion of nursing practice. Guided by Multi-Attribute Utility theory (MAU theo
ry), an expert panel identified 24 factors representative of NPMs. The fact
ors became elements in a computational index that, when summed, assigns a s
core to a given nursing unit reflecting the extent to which that unit's nur
sing practice model achieves the nursing professional ideal. Initial valida
tion of the index and its elements consisted of comparing assessments of 40
nursing units generated by the index with a global evaluation provided by
each of the expert panelists who proposed the model factors. Pearson correl
ations between the index-generated scores and the global assigned scores pr
ovided evidence supporting the preliminary validation of the index. (C) 200
0 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.