Development and testing of the knowledge-attitudes-practices questionnaire for nurses on the perioperative pulmonary rehabilitation of patients with lung cancer.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop and validate a suitable scale for assessing the level of nurses' knowledge and practice of perioperative pulmonary rehabilitation.

METHODS: We divided the study into two phases: scale development and validation. In Phase 1, the initial items were generated through a literature review. In Phase 2, a cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 603 thoracic nurses to evaluate the scale's validity, reliability, and difficulty and differentiation of items. Item and exploratory factor analyses were performed for item reduction. Thereafter, their validity, reliability, difficulty, and differentiation of items were assessed using Cronbach's α coefficient, retest reliability, content validity, and item response theory (IRT).

RESULTS: The final questionnaire comprised 34 items, and exploratory factor analysis revealed 3 common dimensions with internal consistency coefficients of 0.950, 0.959, and 0.965. The overall internal consistency of the scale was 0.966, with a split-half reliability of 0.779 and a retest reliability Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.936. The content validity of the scale was excellent (item-level content validity index = 0.875-1.000, scale-level content validity index = 0.978). The difficulty and differentiation of item response theory were all verified to a certain extent (average value = 2.391; threshold β values = -1.393-0.820).

CONCLUSIONS: The knowledge-attitudes-practices questionnaire for nurses can be used as a tool to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and practices among nurses regarding perioperative pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with lung cancer.