Development of an international tool to measure nurse job satisfaction by testing the Healthcare Environment Survey beyond Jamaica and the United States to Scotland: A cross sectional study utilizing exploratory factor analysis^*

* The views expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not represent the views of Golden Jubilee Hospital or Healthcare Environment Inc.

ABSTRACT

There is no international standard or benchmark for measuring nurse job satisfaction. The Healthcare Environment Survey (HES) is a psychometrically tested tool for measuring nurse job satisfaction. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to test the HES in the United States and Jamaica where it explained 74 and 79% of the variance of nurse job satisfaction, respectively. Further research is needed to determine if the survey can perform reliably in other settings. The survey was issued to a convenience sample of 634 nursing staff at a national hospital in Clydebank, Scotland in August and September of 2014 and in March of 2015. Exploratory factor analysis was the methodology used. Principal axis factoring was used for extraction, and direct oblimin was used for rotation. Eigenvalues greater than 1.0 were used. Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin was used to assess model fit. Only surveys without missing data were used, and 393 nursing staff (62%) responded to every item in the survey. All items loaded in their subscale. Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin was 0.953, indicating good model fit. The 11 factors explained 79% of the variance of job satisfaction. The HES performed as reliably in Scotland as it did in other settings, denoting the tool’s consistency.

KEYWORDS:

• Job satisfaction
• exploratory factor analysis
• instrument development
• sociotechnical systems theory
• Scotland
• nursing
• factor analysis
• nurses

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Nathaniel Johnson for his proofreading and writing assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Contributors: None.

Ethics approval: None.

Notes on contributors

Dr John Nelson is a nurse, statistician and researcher. He is also the president of Healthcare Environment Inc., a data science company. John works directly with hospital staff to collect, interrupt and use data for data driven action plans. He is passionate about improving the caring process for both patients and healthcare providers.

Anne Marie Cavanagh has been nursing for almost 30 years. Her background is mainly based in cardiac surgery and thoracic surgery specializing in critical care. She has an interest in quality improvement and organizational governance as a route to enhancing patient care. She has worked at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital since 2008 in senior roles, taking on the role of Head of Nursing in 2011. She was appointed as Interim Nurse Director in June 2014 and took up post as Nurse Director on 1 April 2015.

ORCID

John W. Nelson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4134-3803

Notes

* The views expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not represent the views of Golden Jubilee Hospital or Healthcare Environment Inc.