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. 2020 Nov 1;8(4):451.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare8040451.

Development and Validation of a Chinese Version of a Professional Identity Scale for Healthcare Students and Professionals

Hung-Chang Liao  1   2 , Ya-Huei Wang  2   3
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Development and Validation of a Chinese Version of a Professional Identity Scale for Healthcare Students and Professionals

Hung-Chang Liao et al. Healthcare (Basel). .
Free PMC article

Abstract

This study was intended to develop a comprehensive and psychometrically adequate professional identity scale for healthcare students and professionals based on Taiwanese cultural contexts. In order to elicit a more consistent result of the psychometric indices of the newly developed scale, the study adopted a combination of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the consistency of the scale factors. In a pilot study of 562 randomly selected healthcare students and professionals, the EFA yielded a 33-item four-factor model with the terms "professional commitment & devotion" (16 items; 47.33% of variance), "emotional identification & belongingness" (7 items; 9.72% of variance), "professional goals & values" (5 items; 8.17% of variance), and "self-fulfillment & retention tendency" (5 items; 3.38% of variance). The CFA yielded an 18-item four-factor model with good or even excellent fit to the data, where the χ2/df ratio = 1.138, Tucker Lewis index (TLI) = 0.997, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.997, and root mean square of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.016. The convergent validity and discriminant validities were also conducted to test the feasibility of the Professional Identity Scale for Healthcare Students and Professionals (PIS-HSP) scale. For the EFA model, the Cronbach's alphas for the four factors and the overall scale ranged from 0.84 to 0.96; for the CFA model, the Cronbach's alphas and composite reliabilities were, respectively, in the ranges of 0.78-0.93 and 0.78-0.97, demonstrating satisfactory reliabilities. The results proved that the developed PIS-HSP can be a reliable measurement tool to assess professional identity for healthcare students and professionals.

Keywords: confirmatory factor analysis; exploratory factor analysis; healthcare; professional identity.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scree plot for exploratory factor analysis on PIS-HSP.
Figure 2
Figure 2
CFA model for the PIS-HSP scale.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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