Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Job Satisfaction Scale for Thai Nurses in Primary Care Units

Abstract

Nurses are crucial in providing comprehensive care across age groups and healthcare dimensions in primary care services. In Thailand, there are primary care units with no physicians in most primary healthcare units. Thus, nurses' roles and practices in primary health are different from those of nurses in hospitals. In addition, workload, time spent on non-nursing tasks, unsafe working environment, limited opportunities for professional development, and living in rural areas may contribute to job discouragement. Measuring job satisfaction among these nurses may need a scale other than the scale based on nurses working in hospitals. This study aimed to develop and assess the psychometric properties of the Job Satisfaction Scale among 420 Thai nurses working in primary care units. The scale’s items were formulated by a literature review on nurse satisfaction, satisfaction measurement tools, conducting focus group discussions, and undergoing expert reviews. A two-round Delphi approach was employed to validate the content of the scales with three domains and 30 items. The initial scale exhibited acceptable content validity and reliability. Subsequently, a psychometric evaluation was conducted using exploratory factor analysis to determine the construct validity of the scale along with its internal consistency and reliability. The results revealed five domains with 30 items comprising the working environment, the value of work, success and progress, work abilities, and work support and welfare. Finally, the commonalities of the 30 items were adequately explained by the instrument’s domains, with an acceptable internal consistency reliability of the entire scale and for the five domains. Therefore, the scale is suitable for assessing the job satisfaction of nurses in primary care units. However, further evaluation of the construct validity by other methods is needed in studies.