The Turkish Validity and Reliability of Clinical Reasoning Scale for Nursing Students: A Methodological Study

Objective: The aim of the study was to adapt the Clinical Reasoning Scale into Turkish and to evaluate its validity and reliability in nursing students. Methods: The study, which is methodological research, was conducted with 271 nursing students at a university in the Central Anatolia Region. The data were collected with the Personal Information Form and the 'Clinical Reasoning Scale' in its draft form. After the language and content validity of the scale, its construct validity was ensured by confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach Alpha, item -total correlations, divergent and test -retest methods were used for the reliability of the scale. Results: The fit indices of the Clinical Reasoning Scale for its 4 sub -dimensions, namely awareness of clinical clues, verification of clinical problems, identification and implementation of actions, evaluation and reflection, and a total of 16 items, are above 0.90, and according to these results, the structure of the scale is accepted as valid. The average explained variance of the subdimensions is between 0.476-0.579, and the composite reliability is between 0.778-0.854. The total Cronbach Alpha of the scale is 0.92. There is a significant difference between the top 27% and the bottom 27% groups of the scale and the test -retest correlation coefficient is 0.902. Conclusion: It has been determined that the Clinical Reasoning Scale is a valid and reliable scale that can be used to determine the level of clinical reasoning in nursing students with 16 items and 4 sub-dimensions.