The development and psychometric evaluation of the ethical issues scale

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.