The development of a social support scale for nursing students in clinical practice

Purpose: This methodological study developed a scale that reflects the social support characteristics of nursing students who have experienced clinical practice and verified their reliability and validity. Methods: The 37 initial items of the scale were derived based on the results of a previous study that analyzed the concept of nursing students’ social support. The initial items were revised through content validity verification, and 29 preliminary items were finally selected. Data were collected from 220 students enrolled in a nursing department in Jeollabuk-do, who had clinical practice experience, and 205 surveys were used for the final analysis. The data collection period was from March 11 to April 26, 2022. An exploratory factor analysis was performed using maximum likelihood factor extraction and varimax rotation. Results: The social support scale for nursing students who have experienced clinical practice consisted of a total of three sub-factors and 17 items. The three sub-factors were ‘support from family and friends’ (eight items), ‘support from school, professors, and clinical instructors’ (seven items) and ‘support from department seniors’ (two items). The reliability of the developed scale was found to be high, with a Cronbach’s alpha of .93. As a result of verifying the criterion validity of the developed scale, the correlation between the criterion tool and the scale developed in this study was statistically significant. Conclusion: The significance of this study is that it developed a scale to measure social support for the first time among nursing students in Korea.