Developing a scale : adolescents' health choices related rights, duties and responsibilities

Moilanen, T; Pietila, AM; Coffey, M; Kangasniemi, M

Abstract

Background: Adolescents´ health choices have been widely researched, but the ethical basis of these choices, namely their rights, duties and responsibilities, have been disregarded and scale is required to measure these.
Objective: To describe the development of a scale that measures adolescents´ rights, duties and responsibilities in relation to health choices and document the preliminary scale testing.
Research design: A multi-phase development method was used to construct the Health Rights Duties and Responsibilities (HealthRDR) scale. The concepts and content were defined through document analysis, a systematic literature review and focus groups. The content validity and clarity of the items were evaluated by expert panel of 23 adolescents, school nurses and researchers. We then calculated the content validity index and the content validity ratio at on item and scale levels. Preliminary testing was conducted with 200 adolescents aged 15-16 years. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach´s alpha correlation and statistics for the item-analysis were calculated.
Ethical considerations: Ethical approval and permission were obtained according to national legislation and responsible research practice was followed. Informed consent was obtained from the participants and the parents were informed about the study.
Findings: The HealthRDR scale comprises of four sub-scales with 148 items: 15 on health choices, 36 on rights, 47 on duties and 50 on responsibilities. The items had a 0.93 content validity index and a 0.85 content validity ratio. The Cronbach alpha correlation coefficient was 0.99 for the total scale and the individual sub-scales scores were: health choices (0.93), rights (0.97), responsibilities (0.99) and duties (0.98).
Discussion: The findings are discussed in light of the ethical concepts and validity and reliability of the developed scale.
Conclusion: The HealthRDR scale defines and understands adolescents´ rights, duties and responsibilities in relation to health choices and has good content validity. Further testing and refinement of the concepts are needed.

Citation

Moilanen, T., Pietila, A., Coffey, M., & Kangasniemi, M. (2019). Developing a scale : adolescents' health choices related rights, duties and responsibilities. Nursing Ethics, 26(7-8), 2511-2522. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733019832952

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 21, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Apr 9, 2019
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 22, 2019
• Journal: Nursing Ethics
• Print ISSN: 0969-7330
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-0989
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 7-8
• Pages: 2511-2522
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733019832952
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733019832952
• Related Public URLs: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/nej