Development of the Attitude Scale for Nursing Profession.

There is a need to have an appropriate instrument to measure the attitudes towards nursing profession. This study was carried out to develop an Attitude Scale for Nursing Profession (ASNP). The population of the study is composed of final-year students of high schools, the patients, the nurses and students of nursing department. A total of 600 participants were included in this study. The people in the sampling group were asked to write a composition containing their feelings and thoughts about nursing. These compositions were analysed and 89 items about positive and negative attitude were determined. These items were presented to expert opinion and after necessary editions, reliability and validity analyses were conducted. The resulting ASNP consists of 40 items across the following three domains: properties of nursing profession prefer to nursing profession, general position of nursing profession. The final model in confirmatory factor analysis showed that this 40-item ASNP indicated a good fit of the model. The value of the Cronbach's α for the total scale was 0.91. The ASNP is determined to be quite highly valid and reliable, sufficient measuring instrument to determine attitude towards the profession.