Intercorrelations among Factors in Opinions about Mental Illness Scale in Scores of Nonpsychiatric Nurses: Comparison with other Studies

Abstract

Intercorrelations among scores on the five factorially derived dimensions of the Opinions About Mental Illness Scale were computed for 692 registered nurses randomly selected from the mailing list of the American Nurses Association. Nurses in psychiatric settings and those with more than one year of psychiatric experience were excluded from the sample. Six rs were significant but low to moderate in magnitude. However, rs although generally similar were in two cases directionally different from those in previous studies. Type of population sampled, temporal factors, and changes in attitudes toward mental illness were suggested as possible explanations for such differences.