Psychometric performance of the English language six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory in an acute care context

Aims and objectives This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric performance of the six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory in a sample of Australian acute hospital inpatients. Background Caring is significant for nursing, and exploring the prevalence of staff‐caring behaviours is imperative for high‐quality acute care. There is a need for psychometrically sound scales that measures caring in acute care, without imposing extensive respondent burden. Design A cross‐sectional survey design was used to distribute the six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory to an Australian sample of hospital inpatients (n = 210) in December 2012. Method Psychometric evaluation included item performance, construct validity and internal consistency reliability. Results The six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory had satisfactory psychometric performance as evidenced by normally distributed scores, a uni‐dimensional structure explaining 65% of variance in data, a total Cronbach's α of 0·89 and corrected item‐total correlations between 0·51–0·82. Conclusion The six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory had satisfactory estimates of validity and reliability when tested in an Australian sample of acute hospital inpatients. The tool contributes to the literature by being a brief and nonburdensome alternative with seemingly strong psychometric properties to be used in future measures of caring in nursing. Relevance to clinical practice The six‐item Caring Behaviours Inventory provides a psychometrically tested fundament for reflective clinical discussions on how nurse behaviours facilitate or impede patient experiences of caring. This can benefit quality development in clinical practice as being in tune with patient experiences and expectations is fundamental to high quality services and patient satisfaction.