Nursing Older People-Competence Evaluation Tool: Development and Psychometric Evaluation

Background and Purpose: To evaluate the quality of care provided to older people, the competence of the nursing staff must be measured. This study evaluates a new instrument called Nursing Older People-Competence Evaluation Tool (NOP-CET). Methods: A 65-item questionnaire was completed by 1,016 community-based nursing staff and evaluated for validity, reliability, precision, interpretability, acceptability, and feasibility. Results: The survey demonstrated good content validity; conceptually coherent factor structure explaining 54.98% (knowledge items), 65.03% (skills items), and 52.83% (personal attribute items) of the total variance; and internal consistency (.77-.93). Conclusions: The NOP-CET showed good validity and reliability as a measure of community-based nursing staff competence and may be used in further investigations of competence in older people nursing.