Measuring the use of intuition by registered nurses in clinical practice.

AIM

To administer the Smith Intuition Instrument to a sample of registered nurses to clarify its factors and test convergent validity.

METHODS

The Smith Intuition Instrument (27 items), a subscale of the Miller Intuitiveness Instrument (18 items), and demographic questions, were posted to 1,000 registered nurses in January 2006.

RESULTS

With a response rate of 79% (n=79), the findings are preliminary. Principal component factor analysis with orthogonal varimax rotation resulted in four factors accounting for 70.8% of variance: spiritual connections (373%), reassuring feelings (14.6%), physical sensations (12.5%) and bad feelings (6.2%). Eigenvalues ranged from 1.1 to 6.7 and factor loadings ranged from 0.705 to 0.887 An 18-item instrument emerged with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.896 and a range of 0.806 to 0.892 for each factor. Pearson's correlation between the two intuition measures was 0.520.

CONCLUSION

Psychometric evaluation demonstrated construct validity, convergent validity and reliability, and clarified the factors. The Smith Intuition Instrument is a valid and reliable tool for measuring nurses' use of intuition in clinical practice.