Psychometric evaluation of the Arabic version of the Irish Assertiveness Scale among Saudi undergraduate nursing students and interns

Background: Irish Assertiveness Scale is commonly used to examine the individual’ level of assertiveness. There is no adequately validated Arabic instrument that examines the level of assertiveness among Arabic-speaking undergraduate nursing students. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to translate, then evaluate the psychometric properties of the Arabic version of the Irish Assertiveness Scale among Saudi undergraduate nursing students and interns. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Settings: Three nursing colleges from three provinces in Saudi Arabia: Riyadh, Eastern and Makkah provinces. Participants: 283 questionnaires were completed by 3rd and 4th year undergraduate nursing students, and nursing interns. Methods: A standard procedure including forward-backward translation, cultural adaptation and pilot testing was adopted to translate the Irish Assertiveness Scale into Arabic language. Content validity was measured using content validity index. Scale reliability was measured using cronbach’s alpha coefficient and mean inter-item correlation. The sample was randomly split, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was then conducted on each sample to examine the construct validity of the proposed scale. A subsequent convergent validity and discriminant validity were also tested. Results: The item-level content validity index ranged from 0.9 to 1.0, and the overall content validity index was 0.93. The exploratory factor analysis resulted in 23-items, four-factor solution explaining 49.4% of the total variance. The mean inter-item correlation for each factor ranged between 0.22 and 0.4. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the overall scale was 0.80. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the proposed four-factor solution had the best model fit. Whilst discriminant validity was supported in the new model, convergent validity was partially met. Conclusions: This study contributed toward establishing the Arabic version of the Irish Assertiveness Scale. Considering the limitations of the convergent validity demonstrated in the new instrument, a modified version of the Irish Assertiveness Scale might be needed to ascertain the most feasible model which best captures the level of assertiveness in Arabic cultural context.