A scale for measuring graduate nursing students' academic resilience: a development and psychometric testing study

BackgroundThe level of academic resilience among graduate nursing students plays a critical role in determining their ability to successfully complete their studies and develop into competent advanced clinical nurses. To more accurately assess the academic resilience of graduate nursing students, this study aims to develop an academic resilience scale specifically for graduate nursing students and evaluate its psychometric properties.MethodThis study was divided into two stages to develop the academic resilience scale for graduate nursing students (ARSGNS). In the first stage, based on the results of concept analysis of academic resilience of nursing students and the qualitative research of the experience of academic resilience of graduate nursing students, the attributes and characteristics of academic resilience of graduate nursing students were determined, and the item pool of the scale was generated. In the second stage, the psychometric properties of the scale, including item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability tests, were evaluated. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 547 graduate nursing students from April to June 2024.ResultsThe final version of the ARSGNS contains a total of 3 dimensions with a total of 22 items. The three dimensions were: cognitive re-framing dimension (7 items), emotional adjustment dimension (3 items), and behavioral strategies dimension (12 items). The content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.994. Exploratory factor analysis extracted a total of 3 common factors, and the cumulative variance explanation rate was 56.307%. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that all the fitting indices met the standard. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.933, and the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.910.ConclusionThe final version of the ARSGNS, which possesses adequate psychometric properties, is a reliable and effective instrument for educator to assess graduate nursing students' academic resilience and design academic resilience intervention program.Clinical trial numberNot applicable.