Development and Psychometric Testing of the Mariani Nursing Career Satisfaction Scale

Abstract

Background and Purpose: The Mariani Nursing Career Satisfaction Scale© (MNCSS) was developed to explore the influence of mentoring on career satisfaction of registered nurses (RNs). A review of the literature revealed no contemporary valid and reliable measure of career satisfaction. Methods: The MNCSS is a semantic differential of 16 opposite adjective pairs on which participants rate feelings about their nursing career. The MNCSS was used in a pilot study and three major studies exploring career satisfaction of RNs. Validity, reliability, and exploratory factor analysis (FA) were computed to explore the internal structure of the instrument. Results: The newly developed instrument had a content validity index (CVI) of .84 and Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency reliabilities of .93–.96 across three major studies. Exploratory FA (N = 496) revealed a univocal instrument with one factor that explains 57.8% of the variance in career satisfaction scores. Conclusions: The MNCSS is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring career satisfaction. FA of the combined data from three studies yielded one factor that measures the concept of career satisfaction.