European Journal of Social Sciences Volume 15, Number 4 (2010)

Construct Validation of Nurses SelfConcept

Questionnaire in Nigeria
Euckay U. Onyeizugbo
Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
E-mail: euckieo@yahoo.com
Chidozie E. Nwafor
Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Madonna University Okija Nigeria
E-mail: dozie2001ng@yahoo.com
Abstract
The present study examined the utility of Cowins (2000, 2001, 2002) Nurses SelfConcept Questionnaire (NSCQ) in a Nigerian sample. One hundred and seventy nurses
participated in the study, including 100 student nurses and 70 practicing nurses.
The main focus of the research was to validate the Nurses Self-concept
Questionnaire by Cowin (2002) in Nigeria so that meaningful research with other construct
can be done using the instrument. Construct validation of the questionnaire was tested by
means of confirmatory factor analyses testing the goodness to fit indices (CFI/NNFI,IFI,
RMSEA and chi square), calculations of Cronbach alpha and correlations of within
construct. Also correlations of NSCQ with other constructs such as job satisfaction, which
was measured using Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) and Burnout, which was
measured using Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) were obtained to support the utility of
the instrument. The results showed acceptable alpha(s) for the subscales, an acceptable
CFI/NNFI and acceptable RMSEA Index. The correlations of within construct and between
construct showed that NSCQ robust and valid instrument for assessing nurses self-concept.
Keywords: Burnout; Construct validation; Job satisfaction; Nurses Self-concept

1. Introduction
Many researchers have conceptualized self-concept to mean how we see ourselves in our mind or how
we think and feel about ourselves (Cowin, 2000, Mlinar Turak & Karpjuk 2009) and believed that
self-concept to a large extent can influence our perception of our potential in our personal lives.
Therefore how we perceive ourselves could ultimately affect our view of ourselves in relation to work,
especially our ability to achieve within our working lives.
The understanding of Nurses self-concept is very important. Cowin (2002), found that low
self-concept among nurses may be implicated in high stress, increased burnout, attrition and low
professional status. And Nurses self-concept has also been demonstrated to mediate critical thinking
(Beeken, 1997), Job satisfaction and graduate retention among nurses (Cowin, 2002). Self-concept may
be implicated in many other important psychological constructs that are useful in understanding
nursing profession.

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1.1. Multi-dimensionality of Nurses Self-concept
A new dimension to the understanding, conceptualization and measurement of self-concept was paved
by the work of Shavelson, Hubner and Stanton (1976) with their proposition of multi- dimensional
model of self-concept as against the one-dimensional model. Within these advances in self-concept
research, the multi-dimensional structures were explored and more clarity understanding gained on
how the domains within the multi-dimensional structure may link together (Cowin, 2000).
Consequently, researchers (Byrne, 1996, Cowin, 2000, 2001 & 2002, Guerin, Marsh & Famose, 2003,
Marsh, 1990) through their various extensive studies across cultures have shown that self-concept is
better understood from a multi-dimensional perspective.
Cowin (2000, 2001, & 2002) in particular changed for good the understanding and
measurement of nurses self-concept. Her studies indicated that nurses self-concept theory languishes
in the grips of theoretical and methodological weakness (Cowin, 2000) thus she developed and
validated a standardized nurses self-concept questionnaire from a six factors multi-dimensional
perspective which makes it possible for more credible research to be conducted within construct and
between other constructs. The Nurses self-concept questionnaire is a thirty six (36) item instrument
utilizing six dimensions (Nurse General Self-concept (NGSC), Care, Staff Relations, Communication,
Knowledge and Leadership) see figure 1.1. The NSCQ is designed to measure the self-concept of a
person who works as or is in the process of becoming registered nurse or who has worked as a
registered nurse in any area that involves nursing practice (Cowin 2002).
Figure 1.1: A path diagram representing the multi-dimensional six factor model of nurses self-concept. The
oval shapes represent the six latent factors, while the rectangular shapes represent the items

In Nigeria, as in many other West African countries despite the importance of understanding
self-concept, no meaningful study have attempted to assess nurses self-concept using a well
researched multi-dimensional nurses self-concept scale such as Cowins nurses self-concept
questionnaire even though nursing profession is a vital area of the countrys health sector. Currently
there is brain drain in nursing profession in Nigeria, as the very few trained nurses leave the country
for Europe and America for better employment opportunities. Self-concept is thought to influence
human behavior positively or negatively depending on its level in an individual and can be a potent
predictor of how well individual nurses perform or perceive his/her duty.

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1.2. Purpose
The present study assesses the validity and utility of the multi-dimensional nurses self-concept
questionnaire by Leanne Cowin in the Nigerian sample. This will open a gate way for other credible
studies on the impacts of nurses self-concept among African nurses which in the past has not been
adequately investigated using a well fashioned and standardized instrument which is based on a multidimension perspective such as the one proposed by Shavelson et al. (1976). The study will further
assess the utility of the instrument by investigating the nature of its relation with constructs like, Job
satisfaction and burnout. As stated by Cowin (2002) an accurate assessment of nurses self-concept is a
necessary pre-requisite prior to relating self-concept to other factors.
1.3. Hypotheses
Ho 1: The nurses self-concept questionnaire will not show good internal consistency
Ho 2: The instrument will not show a good fit indices as measure by the Confirmatory factor analysis
Ho 3: There will be no significant relationship between the instrument and the measures of burnout
and job satisfaction

2. Method
2.1. Participants
One hundred and seventy nurses including final year student nurses (58.8% =100) and nurses who are
practicing (41.2% = 70) participated in the study. Appropriate consent was sought from the school
administrators and the hospital authorities and from all the volunteered participants. Two public
hospitals in Enugu State, Eastern Nigeria that run certified schools of general nursing and midwifery
were involved in the study. The language of study in the school is English language and one of the prerequisites for admission into the schools or any training as a nurse in Nigeria is at least six credits
including English language. Female participants were (80% = 136) while male participants were (20%
= 34). The average age of the student nurses was 26 years and that of the practicing nurses 37 years.
2.2. Instruments
The measure used for the study was Nurses self-concept questionnaire (NSCQ) by Cowin (2000,
2001& 2002). NSCQ measures self-concept of nurses from six multidirectional perspectives namely:
Nurses General Self-concept: Defined as an inclusive sense of self-esteem, which
encompasses a positive regard of the self with nursing.
Caring: Defined as the type of attention given to another that involves a sense of concerned
interest in their well-being.
Staff Relationship: This is a sense of belonging to a professional group, enjoying being a team
member and being encouraged and motivated by peers.
Communication: To confidently impart knowledge and information to other health caregivers
or consumers.
Knowledge: The confidence and ability to learn, embrace new nursing skills and theories with
patients, and others.
Leadership: Confidence and ability in leading others in the health team, especially other nurses.
The instrument contains 36 items, and six factors, each factor has six items. It is arranged in eight point
Likert format ranging from 1 = definitely false to 8 = definitely true. All items are positively worded
and each dimension contains a balance of affective (1 feel) and cognitive (1 think) declarative
statements. High scores are interpreted as high self-concept. Cowin (2000, 2001&2002) obtained the
following psychometric properties for the instrument; the Cronbach alpha for the different subscales
ranges from .93 for nurses general self-concept scale and leadership scale to .83 for knowledge scale.
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The subscale correlations range from .40 for leadership and NGSC to .85 for communication and staff
relationship. The exploratory factor analysis show clear six factor structure while the confirmatory
factor analysis showed a reasonable fit indices TLI = .89, RNI = .90, and RMSEA = .071.
Other instruments used to establish the utility of NSCQ include the Short Version Minnesota
Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) by Weiss, Dawis, England and Lofquist, (1967). This contain 20
items which are meant to assess how individuals are satisfied with their present Job, what things the
individuals are satisfied with or not satisfied with in their job. The questionnaire is arranged in a five
point Likert format ranging from 1 = very Dissatisfied to 5 = very satisfied. It consists of three scales,
intrinsic satisfaction, extrinsic satisfaction and general satisfaction. The developers reported Hoyt
reliability coefficients of .84 for intrinsic satisfaction, .77 for extrinsic satisfaction and .87 for general
satisfaction subscales.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) by Maslach and Jackson (1986). The MBI is used to
assess the three components of the burnout syndrome; emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and
reduced personal accomplishment. It contains 22 items with the three mentioned subscales. The items
are written in the form of statements about personal feeling or attitudes (e.g 1 feel burned out from my
work, I dont really care what happens to some recipients). The items are answered in terms of the
frequency with which the respondent experiences these feelings on a 7 point fully anchored scale
(ranging from 0 = never to 6 = every day). The emotional exhaustion subscale contains nine items,
depersonalization subscale contains five, while personal accomplishment subscale contains eight items.
The Cronbachs coefficient alphas for the scale are, .90 for emotional exhaustion, .79 for
depersonalization, and .71 for personal accomplishment.
2.3. Procedure
Copy of the NSCQ questionnaire forms were given firstly to five senior staff nurses of the university of
Nigeria Nsukka medical centre for content validity. They were asked to rate each of the items based on
their assessment of how the items relate to how nurses feel or think of themselves and clarity of the
items. The judges rated each item of the NSCQ form using a three point rating scale of Relevant (R)
Not Relevant (NR), and Relevant but poorly designed (RPD) using (Lawshe, 1975) minimum values
of content validity ratio per item at P =.05. A score of .99 and above is accepted as rule of thumb
Lawshe (1975) for the judges agreements for accepting an item. All the 36 items was retained as they
all reached the acceptable parameter based on the judges agreement. Thereafter, consent was sought
from the administrators of the schools and hospitals to permit the researchers conduct their research in
the institutions with a cover letter describing the nature of the work and purpose of the research. After
considering the ethical implications of the study, the authorities allowed the researchers to conduct
their study and only volunteered subjects who filled the consent form participated in the study. The
English versions of the three questionnaire forms were administered simultaneously to all volunteered
students nurses in a class room and thereafter, they were brief on the importance of the study. The
practicing volunteered nurses were given the questionnaire through the administration officer of the
hospital and all the volunteer participants returned the properly filled questionnaire forms. These
questionnaire forms were scored and used for analysis.
2.4. Statistical Analysis
The statistical analyses described in this study were conducted with SPSS 15.00 and LISREL 8.80
(J reskog and S rbom 2007). Before the analyses all the instruments were well scored according to
the specification for scoring each instrument. However, both students and experienced nurses scores
were combined during analyses.
Construct validity: There are various ways to validate an instrument. The first step is usually a
test of internal consistency of the instrument using cronbachs coefficient alpha reliability estimate
which has a general accepted target value of .70 (Garson,2005, Lewicki & Hill, 2006, Schmitt,1996).
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Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were conducted using LISREL 8.80 (J reskog and
S rbom 2007). For detailed description of the CFA procedure using LISREL (see Byrne 1998,
Harrington, 2009 , and Kelloway 1998). Furthermore, in line with the work of Batinic, Wolff and
Haupt (2007), the goodness of fit statistics was obtained emphasizing the Root mean square error of
approximation (RMSEA), the comparative fix index (CFI), Non-normed fit index (NNFI) and
incremental fit index (IFI). The X2 test was also used to test the fitness of the model.
RMSEA values less than .05 indicate good fit and values as high as .08 represent acceptable
errors of approximation (HU and Bentler, 1998). The CFI/NNFI and IFI vary along a 0 to 1 continuum
in which values greater than .90 and .95 are taken to reflect an acceptable and excellent fit of the data
(Bentler, 1990). However, an index of .90 and above is considered as acceptable fit (Harrington, 2009).
Finally, nurses self-concept should influence other desirable psychological attributes, job
satisfaction and burnout inclusive (Cowin, 2000, 2002). Thus to test the utility of NSCQ, the total
scores were correlated with the measures of job satisfaction and burnout. Going from the finding of
Cowin 2002, a self-concept measure should have significant positive correlations with the measure of
job satisfaction and negative correlations with the measure of burnout. This is because high scores in
self-concept and job satisfaction measures are interpreted to be positive and desirable while high score
in burnout is interpreted as negative and mostly undesirable.

3. Result
3.1. Internal Consistency
The cronbachs alpha(s) coefficient estimate for the instrument and subscales was acceptable and
reached the target reliability of at least .70 (Garson, 2005, Lewicki & Hill, 2006, Schmitt, 1996) see
table 3.1
Table 3.1: The coefficient cronbachs alpha(s) for NSCQ
FACTORS

NGSC
.75

CARE
.72

STAFF
.70

COMM
.75

KNOW
.70

LED
.74

Total for NSCQ = .89

Note: NGSC= Nurses general selfconcept; comm = communication; know = knowledge; led = leadership. =
Cronbachs coefficient alpha

3.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

The CFA model tested the ability of the six factors to explain the relationship among the 36 items. This
model with 36 items positing six nurses self-concept factors provided a good fit to the data ( CFI=.91,
NNFI=.91, IFI=.91, RMSEA=.06 and x2 =982.09,df=579, p=0.0) see figure 1.1 for the structure of the
model positing six nurses self-concept factors. The solution was fully proper and the factor structure
was well defined with all factor loading being positive and significant and were larger than .30 ( from
.49 to .73) see table 3.2. The correlations among the six factors were small to moderate ( rs=.30 to .63),
indicating that the factors were clearly distinguishable from one another (see table 3.3). In sum, there
was support for the six factor model in Nigerian sample based on the finding of; (a) a reasonable model
fit (i.e. CFI, NNFI, IFI=.91).( b) good factor loading for the model ( .49 and above for each item
loading on the respective factor). (c) reasonably low correlation among the six factors (<.7).

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Table 3.2: Summary of the Item - factor loading
Items
NGSC3
NGSC6
NGSC12
NGSC16
NGSC18
NGSC27

Note:

NGSC
.39
.76
.76
.78
.39
.48

Items
CARE1
CARE20
CARE23
CARE29
CARE31
CARE34

CARE
.49
.33
.63
.58
.65
.68

Item
STAFF2
STAFF9
STAFF11
STAFF15
STAFF24
STAFF32

STAFF
.53
.34
.48
.71
.55
.60

Items
COMM7
COMM13
COMM21
COMM26
COMM30
COMM36

COMM
.48
.52
.49
.61
.72
.74

Items
KNOW4
KNOW10
KNOW14
KNOW19
KNOW25
KNOW35

KNOWL

Items

LED

.53
.51
.68
.38
.48
.66

LED5
LED8
LED17
LED22
LED28
LED33

.46
.53
.49
.72
.78
.64

NGSC= Nurses general self concept; comm = communication; know = knowledge; led = leadership.

Table 3.3: Sub-factor correlation of the six factors of nurses SelfConcept Questionnaire
NGSC
CARE
STAFF
COMM
KNOW
NGSC
1
CARE
.60
1
STAFF
.40
.43
1
COMM
.35
.46
.60
1
KNOW
.50
.53
.63
.58
1
LED
.33
.30
.35
.50
.40
Note: NGSC= Nurses general selfconcept; comm = communication; know = knowledge; led = leadership

LED

Relationship with other constructs: The results of the correlations of NSCQ with job
satisfaction measure MSQ by Weiss et al. (1967), showed the following, r = .37, p<.001, r = .32, p<
.001 and r = .33, p<.001 for intrinsic, extrinsic and general subscales of MSQ respectively. Also, the
correlation of NSCQ with MBI by Maslach and Jackson (1986) showed the following, r = -.34, p<.001
for correlation with MBI total score and r = -.33, r = -.24, r = -.30, p<.001 for NSGC correlations with
emotion, personal accomplishment and depersonalization subscales of MBI respectively.

4. Discussion
Nurses generally play a vital role in the health sector of every nation and the welfare of the individuals
involved in nursing job should be of optimum priority of every nation. Developed countries as it is
have through advanced researches devised many ways of maintaining the welfare of the personnel in
their nursing professions and researchers have agreed that the nurses self-concept play a pivotal role in
understanding of the personnel involved in nursing job (Beeken, 1997, Cowin, 2002). Developing
nations of which Nigeria is one seemed to be left behind in this advances because they just adopt or
utilized the results of the studies done in developed nation without assessing the validity of such
studies in their culture. One reason given for such direct adoption of foreign research studies into
practice in developing nations is that there are lack of instruments to conduct such study. Behavioral
sciences have developed various techniques of revalidating and assessing the utility of foreign
developed instrument in another culture so that such instrument can be used in the said culture. Nurses
self-concept questionnaire was developed by Leanne Cowin, who has used the instrument to conduct
many valid studies on the important of self-concept in understanding nurses (Cowin, 2000,2001,&
2002). The need to understand the important of self-concept among Nigerian nurses gave rise to this
study. It is thought that the results will be valuable to other sub-Saharan African nations that share the
same similarities with Nigeria.
As can be seen in table 3.1 the internal consistency analysis of the instrument utilizing
Cronbachs coefficient alpha reached acceptable alpha(s) which rejected the first hypothesis. This is
consistent to the finding of (Cowin 2000,2002) who reported that the questionnaire has an acceptable
Cronbachs alpha(s). The results of the CFA as assessed by the CFI/NNFI, RMSEA and chi-x2, reached
acceptable fits. Table 3.2 showed that the factor structure were will defined and table 3.3 showed that
the factors were clearly distinguishable from one another, this also rejected the second hypothesis and
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is also consistent with the finding of the original author.. The correlations of NSCQ with job
satisfaction measure MSQ by Weiss et al. (1967), showed the following, r = .37, p<.001, r = .32, p<
.001 and r = .33, p<.001 for intrinsic, extrinsic and general subscales of MSQ respectively. This result
is in agreement with the finding of Cowin ( 2000, 2002) nurses self-concept questionnaire has positive
correlation with job satisfaction, thus as self-concept increases it is predicted that job satisfaction
should also increase. The correlation of NSCQ with MBI by Maslach and Jackson (1986) showed the
following, r = -.34, p<.001 for correlation with MBI total score and r = -.33, r = -.24, r = -.30, p<.001
for NSGC correlations with emotion, personal accomplishment and depersonalization subscales of
MBI respectively. The significant of these correlations coefficients rejected the third hypothesis and
supports the fact that the instrument has good predictive validity. Maslach, Jackson & Leiter (1997)
reported that high burnout can lead to deterioration in the quality of care or services provided by the
staff, low job turnover, absenteeism, dysfunction and low self morale. Therefore nurses with high selfconcept should have low burnout, thus the negative correlation observed from the results.
4.1. Conclusion
Cowins Nurses self-concept questionnaire has undoubtedly shown robust psychometric
characteristics and good constructs validity that makes the researchers conclude that it is useful for
nurses self-concept research in Nigeria.
4.2. Limitation
Although the present study presented the nature of the relationship of the construct with other
constructs, however, further research can be conducted using a stronger statistical analysis like
regression to determine predictive strength of NSCQ with some other desirable psychological
construct.

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