Purpose: To describe the Ethical Issues Scale (EIS), its conceptual develop
ment and psychometric evaluation, and its uses in determining bow frequentl
y nurses experience ethical issues in practice.
Design: The EIS was validated with a sample (N=2,090) of New England regist
ered nurses (RNs) currently in practice. The sample was randomly split into
two approximately equal samples. The calibration sample was used to derive
the underlying components; the validation sample was used to confirm the c
omponent structure.
Methods: Psychometric analysis of the 35-item EIS included. (a) item analys
is, (b) confirmatory principal components analysis (PCA), and (c) internal
consistency reliability using Cronbach's alpha.
Results: Three components (end-of-life-treatment issues, patient care issue
s, and human rights issues) were demonstrated, confirming the original conc
eptually-derived structure. The calibration sample accounted for 42.4% of i
nitially extracted common variance; the validation sample accounted for 41.
5% of initially extracted common variance. Conclusions: The three EIS subsc
ales bad satisfactory internal consistency reliability and factorial validi
ty for use as independent scales in future studies.