Development of the scale of hygiene behaviors for nursing students

Background: There is a need to have an appropriate instrument to measure the hygiene behaviors for nursing students. This study was carried out to develop a Hygiene Behavior Scale (HBS). Methods: The population of the study is composed of the students of students of nursing department. A total of 416 participants were included in this study. The students in the sampling group were asked to write a composition containing their feelings and thoughts about hygiene. These compositions were analysed and 87 items about positive and negative behaviors were determined. These items were presented to expert opinion and after necessary editions, reliability and validity analyses were conducted. Results: The resulting HBS consists of 25 items across the following three domains: Personal hygiene, handwashing technique and food-related hygiene. The final model in confirmatory factor analysis showed that this 25-item HBS indicated a good fit of the model. The value of the Cronbach's a for the total scale was 0.90. Conclusions: The HBS is determined to be quite highly valid and reliable, sufficient measuring instrument to determine hygiene behaviors of nursing students.