Content Validation of Quality and Safety Education for Nurses Prelicensure Clinical Evaluation Instruments

Background: Clinical evaluation is a high-stakes assessment that requires valid and reliable instruments that are understandable to faculty and students. Purpose: This article describes the development of Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN)-based clinical evaluation instruments to measure competency in prelicensure clinical courses. The goal was to establish content validation for the items included on each and appropriately level requisite behaviors to demonstrate increasing progression in clinical performance expectation from fundamentals to senior nursing clinical courses. Methods: Based on their area of expertise, nurse educators were recruited into panels of 5 to 7 members each to review and rate items for relevance for each course-specific clinical evaluation instrument using the Content Validity Index. Results: Two rounds of rigorous review yielded 6 content-validated instruments. Conclusions: The QSEN-based clinical evaluation instruments provide standardized language framed in quality and safety that demonstrate evolving sophistication, complexity, and expectation in student clinical performance.