Design and validation of an instrument to measure nursing research culture: the Nursing Research Questionnaire (NRQ)

Aim. To describe the development of a self‐administered questionnaire to study the nursing research culture in a Spanish hospital. Background. There is urgent need to promote nursing research in Spain. To do this, it is imperative to understand the Spanish nursing research culture. As no valid Spanish instrument was available, a new instrument called the Nursing Research Questionnaire was developed. Design. A survey and psychometric approach. Methods. The development and testing of the instrument had three phases which included: identification of concepts and questions; pilot work of the first draft of the tool; and a survey and further test of the instrument. Results. The new instrument was a self‐administered questionnaire which contained 43 items divided into three main sections: nurses’ research capability; research related activity; and factors influencing research development. The pilot work and the survey results indicated adequate content and face validity of the tool. The internal consistencies of the tool for the four subscales ranged from 0·25–0·93, and the intraclass correlation coefficients in three subscales were over 0·70. Conclusions. This paper describes the development of a self‐administered questionnaire to gather information about the nursing research culture in a Spanish hospital. After further refinement, its use will provide information that will contribute to the development of nursing research in Spain. Relevance to clinical practice. The new instrument could be used to provide an understanding of the research culture among nurses in Spain, which will help to design targeted interventions to promote nursing research activity and improve the quality of nursing practice and patient care.