Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Nursing Care Motivation Scale: A Methodological Study.

BACKGROUND: Nursing care motivation is a key determinant of caring behaviours and quality of care outcomes. However, existing instruments do not adequately capture motivation specific to the nursing care context. OBJECTIVE: To develop a valid and reliable instrument to determine nurses' motivation and willingness to provide care, as well as the factors guiding their caring behaviour. DESIGN: Instrument development and psychometric testing of content validity, reliability and construct validity. METHODS: This methodological study included 30 nurses for the pilot study, 397 for principal component analysis (PCA), 350 for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and 30 for test-retest reliability. Face and content validity, construct validity and reliability analyses were conducted to develop the scale and assess its psychometric properties. Data were collected between December 2024 and December 2025. RESULTS: The content validity index of the scale was 0.98. PCA revealed a five-factor structure with 27 items, explaining 72.35% of the total variance. Factor loadings ranged from 0.65 to 0.89. CFA supported the model with acceptable fit indices (χ2/df = 2.446, CFI = 0.94, TLI = 0.93 and RMSEA = 0.06). The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.952, the Guttman split-half was 0.843, and the test-retest reliability was 0.937. CONCLUSION: The Nursing Care Motivation Scale (NCMS) is a valid and reliable tool that can be used by nurses. IMPLICATION FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The NCMS provides nurse managers with a practical tool to identify modifiable factors influencing nursing care motivation, inform targeted interventions and enhance the quality and sustainability of patient-centred care.