Chinese Version of Needlestick Injury Prevention Beliefs Scale Proves Reliable for Nurses

Chinese clinical nurses now have a validated instrument for measuring their beliefs about preventing needlestick injuries, according to a cross-sectional psychometric study published in BMC Nursing. Researchers translated the Needlestick Injury Prevention Beliefs Scale (NSI-PBS) into Chinese and tested the resulting version, called the NSI-PBS-C, on 620 clinical nurses at a tertiary hospital in Jiangxi, China. The team reported that the scale showed satisfactory reliability and validity, suggesting it is well suited for assessing prevention-related beliefs among Chinese nursing staff.

Needlestick injuries remain a common occupational hazard for healthcare workers, and nurses’ preventive behaviors are closely linked to their exposure risk. Despite this connection, validated scales for measuring healthcare workers’ beliefs about needlestick injury prevention have been scarce. The study aimed to fill that gap by cross-culturally adapting the existing scale and evaluating its measurement properties in a Chinese hospital setting.

The researchers used the Brislin forward–backward translation model to adapt the scale. They then assessed content, structural, convergent, and discriminant validity, along with internal consistency, split-half, and test–retest reliability.

Content validity results were strong. Item-level content validity index values ranged from 0.900 to 1.000, and the average scale-level content validity index (S-CVI/Ave) was 0.956, indicating that experts judged the translated items to be highly relevant to the construct being measured.

Exploratory factor analysis identified six factors that together explained 79.327% of the total variance in responses. Confirmatory factor analysis then demonstrated adequate model fit, with a χ²/df of 2.153, CFI of 0.912, TLI of 0.902, NFI of 0.914, IFI of 0.920, GFI of 0.916, RMSEA of 0.043, and SRMR of 0.022 — figures within commonly accepted thresholds for structural validity.

Reliability testing also produced favorable results. The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.924, indicating high internal consistency across the scale’s items, and test–retest reliability was 0.933 (95% CI 0.905–0.961), showing that scores were stable when the instrument was administered on repeated occasions.

The authors concluded that the NSI-PBS-C exhibits satisfactory reliability and validity. Because its items are concise, they noted, the scale is suitable for assessing beliefs about needlestick injury prevention among Chinese clinical nurses.

As with any validation study, the findings apply to the population and setting examined — clinical nurses at a single tertiary hospital in Jiangxi — and the psychometric statistics describe the performance of the translated instrument rather than the effectiveness of any prevention intervention.

Subject of Research: Cross-cultural translation and psychometric validation of a needlestick injury prevention beliefs scale for Chinese clinical nurses

Article Title: Translation, reliability, and validity of the Chinese version of the needlestick injury prevention beliefs scale among clinical nurses: a cross-sectional study

Article References: Cheng, Z., Xia, J., Huang, R., Yuan, Q., Zhang, B., & Cao, Y. (2026). Translation, reliability, and validity of the Chinese version of the needlestick injury prevention beliefs scale among clinical nurses: a cross-sectional study. BMC Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-026-05544-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12912-026-05544-5

Keywords: needlestick injury, nurses, psychometrics, scale validation, occupational health, China, cross-cultural adaptation, reliability, validity, cross-sectional study, BMC Nursing, translation