Development and psychometric evaluation of a Pediatric Nursing Excellence Scale (PNES-NS) for nursing students.

AIM: This study aimed to develop a Pediatric Nursing Excellence Scale (PNES-NS) for nursing students in Türkiye and to evaluate its validity and reliability. BACKGROUND: Improving nursing excellence is considered important in both academic and clinical contexts. The quality of nursing care provided to children and families is closely related to excellence in pediatric nursing. DESIGN: This study was conducted using a cross-sectional methodological design. METHODS: This study was conducted with 402 nursing students at a university in Türkiye between November and December 2025. The initial item pool was evaluated based on expert opinions and a pilot study conducted with 15 nursing students. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to examine construct validity. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficients, item-total correlations and test-retest reliability in a different sample (n = 54). RESULTS: The final scale comprised 29 items across two dimensions (Knowledge and Awareness, Clinical Skills), explaining 56.33% of the total variance. The content validity index (CVI) values for the items ranged from 0.90 to 1.00. In the EFA, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was 0.943 and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant. CFA results indicated good model fit (χ²/df = 2.63; RMSEA = 0.064). Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.967 and 0.873 for the two subdimensions and 0.953 for the overall scale. The total scale showed high reliability (r = 0.851), while the subdimensions showed moderate-to-high test-retest reliability (r = 0.535-0.820). CONCLUSIONS: The PNES-NS demonstrates promising psychometric properties for assessing excellence in pediatric nursing of nursing students.