Construct validity and internal consistency of Hall's Professionalism Scale: tested on South African nurses.

OBJECTIVE: In South Africa, appropriate criteria to measure the professional standing of professional nurses are essential. Internationally, there are professionalism scales by which to measure professionalism, but none could be identified that were particular to the South African context. Hall's Professionalism Scale consists of 50 items and was specifically developed to measure the attitudes and ideologies held by professionals in various professional occupations by measuring five attitudinal components of professionalism, namely: Sense of calling to the field; Autonomy; Using professional organisation as major referent; Belief in self-regulation; and Belief in public service. In this study, the construct validity and internal consistency of the constructs of Hall's Professionalism Scale were assessed among professional nurses in the South African context.

RESULTS: Originally Hall's Professionalism Scale comprises 50 items. This scale was reassessed by Snizek, who retained only 25 items of the original scale to measure professional standing. During preliminary analysis of the South African data, 23 items were included.