Psychometric development of an instrument measuring social bullying in nursing academia: Item development and content validation

Abstract

Background Social bullying in academic nursing schools is an understudied area, yet extant research shows it is prevalent. Purpose The purpose of this study was to generate a formal definition for academic social bullying and content validate an instrument measuring it in academic nursing. Methods Classic psychometric theory and survey design were used to develop an instrument measuring academic social bullying. Extensive literature review and analysis of existing instruments were conducted; 108 items indicating bullying behaviors and organizational characteristics were created. This study targeted establishing initial content validity. Forty nurse experts who had experienced or published on academic bullying were invited; 24 responded. Experts rated agreement with relevance/appropriateness of items using a Likert scale and provided comments. Results Forty items with content validity indexes near 0.80 and supportive comments were retained. A formal definition was developed from experts' feedback. Conclusions Insights regarding differences between bullying and incivility were obtained.