Lateral Violence in Nursing Survey: Instrument Development and Validation
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-19-2017
Originally Published In
Healthcare
Volume Number
5
Issue Number
3
Downloads before May 2022
26
Abstract
An examination of the psychometric properties of the Lateral Violence in Nursing Survey (LVNS), an instrument previously developed to measure the perceived incidence and severity of lateral violence (LV) in the nursing workplace, was carried out. Conceptual clustering and principal components analysis were used with survey responses from 663 registered nurses and ancillary nursing staff in a southeastern tertiary care medical center. Where appropriate, Cronbach’s alpha (α) evaluated internal consistency. The prevalence/severity of lateral violence items constitute two distinct subscales (LV by self and others) with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.74 and 0.86, respectively. The items asking about potential causes of LV are unidimensional and internally consistent (alpha = 0.77) but there is no conceptually coherent theme underlying the various causes. Respondents rating a potential LV cause as “major” scored higher on both prevalence/severity subscales than those rating it a “minor” cause or not a cause. Subsets of items on the LVNS are internally reliable, supporting construct validity. Revisions of the original LVNS instrument will improve its use in future work.
