The purpose of this paper is to produce a Cognitive Orientation to Nursing measurement tool to increase nurse teachers' understanding and nursing students' consciousness of students' personal orientation to nursing. This understanding and consciousness might help teachers and students to understand that there are various reasons why people enter, stay in or leave the nursing profession. The instrument development process presented in this paper is based on the Cognitive Orientation to Nursing substantive theory. The measurement tool covers the content areas in the model. A panel of third year nursing students (n=25) assessed the readability, homogeneity, content validity, and test-retest stability of the measurement. The judges accepted all items in terms of clarity and content validity. The agreement on homogeneity with all but three items was above .60. Internal consistency testing (n = 184 nursing students) showed total scale theta of .80, satisfactory CVI and stability coefficients for all items, and construct validity as satisfactory for the final set of 15 items.
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