Validation of the verbal and social interaction questionnaire for nursing students–The focus of nursing students in their relationship with patients

Abstract

The Verbal and Social Interaction Nursing Students questionnaire (VSI-NS) has been created to measure the development of verbal, social and interactional skills of nursing students with patients, from their perspective in nursing care. The aim of the present study was to determine the construct validity and internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire. The study had a methodological and developmental design and was carried out in four steps: adjustment of the items, face validity, data collection and data analysis. The number of items was reduced from 48 to 31. The factor analysis of the final 31 items resulted in four quite distinct factors: “Inviting to talk about feelings and thoughts”, “Building a caring relationship”, “Encouraging social and practical aspects in daily life” and “Caring towards health and wellbeing”. The results showed satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of content validity, construct validity and the internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire.  It could be concluded that the original conceptual model could serve as a theoretical foundation to explain and understand nurses’ caring interactions with their patients.