Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Professional Practice Work Environment Inventory.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose is to examine the psychometric properties of the professional practice work environment inventory (PPWEI).

BACKGROUND: Derived from the Professional Practice Environment (PPE) and the Revised PPE scales, the PPWEI was designed to measure 8 components of the PPE that can be used to assist nurse administrators in decision-making.

METHODS: A psychometric evaluation was undertaken with 874 nurses who were providing direct care to patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital and who provided no missing data on the newly developed 72-item PPWEI.

RESULTS: Cronbach's α internal consistency reliability of the total score was .93, with 61 items having factor loadings more than .50, the factor loading cutoff used to define the component subscales. Principal component analyses with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization demonstrated 8 components, explaining 64.6% of variance. Cronbach's α reliability coefficients of the PPWEI subscales ranged from .82 to .93.

CONCLUSION: The multidimensional PPWEI is a psychometrically sound measure of several components of the PPE in the acute care setting and sufficiently reliable and valid for use as independent subscales in healthcare research.