title: Development and testing of an evaluation scale of personal digital assistants.
abstract: With the increasingly popular use of PDAs in healthcare, the need for a reliable scale to evaluate this technology has become critical. The authors describe the development and testing of an evaluation scale for PDAs in nurses' daily practice. A review of the literature generated a 30-item questionnaire that was administered online to a convenience sample of 334 hospital nurses in Taiwan. The scale's reliability and validity were established by item and factor analyses. From the original pool of 30 items, 24 were selected and grouped into six major constructs: user preference, nursing efficiency, user training, device features, drug content, and user support. The scale's overall reliability (alpha coefficient) was 0.88. Survey results showed an overall slightly negative score for the evaluation scale for PDAs, indicating a slightly moderate evaluation of PDA use. Additional psychometric analysis and refinement of item wordings are recommended.
authors.affiliation: National Taipei College of Nursing, Taipei, Taiwan. tingting@ntcn.edu.tw
authors.forename: Ting-Ting
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Kuan-Chia
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Juin-Shu
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D034201:Computers, Handheld; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital; D010865:Pilot Projects; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D013624:Taiwan