Journal of Nursing & Care

Validation of tool for evaluating the quality of working life - ProQOL â?? for use in an international descriptive study of post-communist countries in Central Europe

Abstract

Petra Kralova

Interest in the issue of nursing job satisfaction in post-communist countries is related to the socio-political aspects with which these European countries are currently confronted, which are intensified by the acute shortage of nurses due to repeated structural changes in health care, demographic unfavorable situations and high fluctuations. According to The European NEXT-Study conducted in ten European countries, nurses in former post-communist countries report the lowest work satisfaction and worse physical and mental health. In these countries a lot of attention is being given to surveys about factors affecting the satisfaction of nurses, but the quality of working life is being investigated limited only. One of the commonly used tools for measuring work quality of life is the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) questionnaire. Questionnaire evaluates the quality of working life based on the assessment of aspects of positive feelings experienced by helping others, which is called Compassion Satisfaction and aspects of negative feelings called Compassion Fatigue, which indicates exhaustion based on a great emotional bond to patients and their families. Because the questionnaire is not linguistically and statistically validated in some Central European countries, comparisons with research conducted in other countries are not possible. The aim is to linguistically validate the Czech and Slovak versions of the ProQOL questionnaire, which will be subjected to a psychometric analysis by a group of respondents. The ProQOL questionnaire will be translated using the "Translation/Back Translation" and "Focus Group Translation" methods. After the translation, a pre-test will be conducted in the form of cognitive interviews to assess the formulation and the understandability of items. Subsequently, the assessment of concurrent and content validity will be carried out with bilingual healthcare respondents. At last, reliability and constructive validity will be evaluated. Because "quality of life" is an abstract criterion, factor analysis will be needed for validation purposes. If the results of validation and subsequent psychometric analysis reach the desired values, the questionnaire can be used to investigate large populations and international comparison of the observed results.