Developing an assessment tool for geropsychiatric mental healthcare knowledge and attitude evaluations in clinical practice for nursing students

Aim: To develop an instrument to investigate geropsychiatric psychological symptoms, health problem nursing knowledge (GPN-K), geropsychiatric psychological symptoms and health problem nursing attitude scale (GPN-A) in clinical practice for nursing students. Design: Instrument development and cross-sectional study for psychometric testing. Methods: Construct validity was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and internal consistency was calculated using Cronbach's alpha. Results: A total of 300 students have completed the questionnaires (85.71% response rate). The CFA of GPN-K showed good fitness and validity. The Kuder-Richardson 20 (KR-20) value of the internal consistency reliability is 0.64. The GPN-A overall content validity index is 0.95. A three-factor structure was shown by exploratory factor analysis. The three factors are communication and care, helping others improve and problem evaluation tendency. The total variance explained is 59.01%. Cronbach's alpha of GPN-A equals 0.84, which represents good internal consistency.