Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Nurses’ Health-Related Procrastination Scale (NHRPS) in Chinese nurses

Background The physical and mental health of nurses is closely related to the quality of nursing and patient safety. Nurses face greater health risks, which are closely related to health procrastination. At present, China lacks scientifically effective tools to assess the level of health-related procrastination among clinical nurses. The purpose of this study was to conduct cross-cultural debugging of the Nurses’ Health-Related Procrastination Scale (NHRPS) and to test the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the NHRPS among clinical nurses. Methods The NHRPS was translated strictly according to cross-cultural debugging guidelines. The content validity of the Chinese version of the Nurses' Health-related Procrastination Scale was evaluated by 10 experts. From November 2024 to January 2025, 395 clinical nurses were surveyed via the Chinese version of the NHRPS. Item analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Cronbach's α coefficient and retest reliability were used to test the reliability and validity of the scale. Results The Chinese version of the NHRPS contains 25 items in 4 dimensions. Four common factors were extracted via exploratory factor analysis, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 64.016%. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the chi-square/degree of freedom (CMIN/DF) was 1.515, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was 0.049, the comparative fit index (CFI) was 0.956, the incremental fit index (IFI) was 0.956, and the Tucker Lewis index (TLI) was 0.951. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.930, and the retest reliability was 0.924. Conclusions The reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the NHRPS are good, and it can be used as a scientific and effective tool to evaluate the current situation of health-related procrastination behaviours for clinical nurses.