Psychometric testing of the Norwegian version of the Simulation Design Scale, the Educational Practices Questionnaire and the Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Scale in nursing education

Introduction: Simulation-based learning is a well-established technique in nursing education. However, there is a need for reliable and validated evaluation tools across both national bound-aries and cultural conditions. Such evaluation tools may contribute in identifying areas for im-provement in simulation-based learning from the nursing students' perspective.Objectives: The aim of this study was to test three widely used American questionnaires - the Simulation Design Scale, the Educational Practices Questionnaire, and the Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence in Learning Scale, for psychometric properties among Norwegian undergraduate nursing students.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at a university simulation center in southern part of Norway. A total of 105 undergraduate nursing students participated, giving a response rate of 77%. An exploratory factor analysis was used to examine construct validity. Cronbach's alpha was applied in order to establish the questionnaires' internal consistency.Results: The exploratory factor analyses displayed the same number of extracted factors as the number of subscales in each of the original American questionnaires. However, the item-factor structure differed from the original item-subscales. The Cronbach's alpha was > 0.7 for all three questionnaires, indicating acceptable internal consistency.Conclusion: Psychometric testing of the Norwegian versions of the three questionnaires, the Sim-ulation Design Scale, the Educational Practices Questionnaire, and the Student Satisfaction and Self -Confidence in Learning Scale , could be used as valid instruments for nursing students to evaluate important aspects of simulation-based learning. This also makes it easier to compare evaluation results of SBL across languages and cultural boundaries. However, to confirm the construct va-lidity of the factors extracted in this study, further multi-site studies are needed to perform a confirmatory factor analysis in a new, large sample.