Psychometric Evaluation of the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey

Graduate nurses experience stress transitioning from the role of nursing student to practicing professional nurse. Understanding the graduate nurse’s role transition experience is important because excessive and unrelieved stress might influence job satisfaction and contribute to high turnover. Measuring and improving the role transition experience for graduate nurses has become important for healthcare organizations due to concerns regarding retention. A valid and reliable instrument was needed to assess the graduate nurse’s role transition experience. The Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey (Casey, Fink, Krugman, & Propst, 2004) is the most commonly used instrument to measure the stressors, fears, and challenges experienced by graduate nurses during their first year of professional practice. A secondary data analysis study was conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey (Casey et al., 2004). The study sample comprised 71,919 newly graduated nurses who completed the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey six-months post-entry into the Vizient/American Association of Colleges of Nursing (Vizient/AACN, 2018) one-year nurse residency program. Exploratory factor analysis using principle axis factoring with Promax© rotation was used to determine the underlying factor structure of the set of variables. A five-factor solution yielded a clear pattern of item loadings. This solution accounted for 49.5% of the total variance between items. The five factors were labeled Job Satisfaction, Support, Role Confidence, Organize/Prioritize Care, and Professional Socialization. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five-factor model and cross-validation indicated no revisions were needed to the model. Estimates of internal consistency reliability for the five factors ranged from .73 to .94. This study provided new information to the body of nursing literature on the psychometric testing of the Casey-Fink Graduate Nurse Experience Survey