Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the spiritual care-giving scale (C-SCGS) in nursing practice

• Published in: BMC medical research methodology 2019-01, Vol.19 (1), p.21-21, Article 21
• Main Authors: Hu, Yanli, Tiew, Lay Hwa, Li, Fan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Asian People; Beliefs, opinions and attitudes; Clinical competence; Cross-Sectional Studies; Education; Evaluation; Female; Hospice care; Humans; Male; Methods; Middle Aged; Nurses; Nursing; Nursing - methods; Nursing research; Patient care; Patient satisfaction; Pediatrics; Perceptions; Psychometrics; Psychometrics - methods; Public opinion; Quality of Life; Quantitative psychology; Questionnaires; Religious aspects; Reproducibility of Results; Spiritual care; Spirituality; Surveys and Questionnaires; Trauma; Validity; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1471-2288; 1471-2288
• DOI: 10.1186/s12874-019-0662-7

Spiritual care is defined as recognizing and responding to the needs of the human spirit when the individual is facing trauma, illness, or sadness. Providing spiritual care is one of the core aspects of holistic care, as it is significantly associated with patients' quality of life. The provision of optimal spiritual care requires good understanding by the nurses. Therefore, it is important to assess this understanding by using a proven, well-validated instrument. The Spiritual Care-Giving Scale (SCGS) is designed to measure nurses' perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care in Singapore. However, it is unknown whether this scale is valid and reliable for use with nurses in the context of Chinese culture. The purpose of this study is to determine this version's validity and reliability for use with nurses in China. In this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study, after translating the English version of the SCGS into Chinese and making adjustments for culture and values, we assessed the performance of this instrument by administering the C-SCGS to a convenience sample of 400 nurses. The participants also completed the Chinese version of the Spiritual Care Competency Scale (C-SCCS) to assess the concurrent validity of the C-SCGS. The internal consistency and homogeneity of the C-SCGS were also tested, and a factorial analysis was performed. Completed questionnaires were obtained from 355 participants (response rate: 88.75%). Four factors were confirmed by an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using Promax with the Kaiser normalization rotation method after the 35-item SCGS was reduced to 34 items, and these factors explained 53.116% of the total variance. The adjusted item-total correlation ranged from 0.527 to 0.760. The Cronbach's alpha of the factors ranged from 0.836 to 0.941, and the Guttman split-half coefficient was between 0.759 and 0.902. The concurrent validity of the C-SCGS and C-SCCS (r = 0.534, p