Nursing students' attitudes toward mental health nursing and consumers: psychometric properties of a self-report scale.

There is a paucity of measures suitable for assessing the impact of educational and clinical placement strategies on nursing students' career preferences and attitudes toward mental health nursing and consumers of mental health services. Information derived from such scales could be used to improve existing recruitment strategies to this specialty area and identify misperceptions held by individuals joining the health care workforce. This article details the psychometric properties of a self-report scale designed to assess (1) preparedness for the mental health field, (2) attitudes toward mental illness and consumers of mental health services, and (3) attitudes toward mental health nursing, including career preferences. Results are based on data from a large Victorian study that explored the attitudes of 802 nursing students before their clinical placement in the mental health field. Principal components analysis with oblique rotation was used to identify the number and composition of components composing the newly developed scale. Results indicated seven components composed of relatively homogenous items; most items were good to excellent measures of each component. Cronbach alpha values indicated acceptable internal consistency of items composing four of the suggested components. Overall, findings indicated that the self-report scale is a useful instrument with acceptable psychometric properties. Descriptive and correlational analyses emphasized the importance of educational preparation preplacement and highlighted the potential for educational strategies to improve recruitment via improved attitudes and preparedness.