To construct a rating scale on the knowledge, attitude, and practice of geriatrics for 8-year clinical medical students and undergraduate nursing students, and to test the reliability and validity of the scale.

The Knowledge, Attitude, Practice(KAP)theory was used as a guided framework, relative literatures were reviewed, and topics for question answering were discussed by experts group.Then, a questionnaire was initially constructed.Five methods, including discrete trend method, Cronbach coefficient, t-test, correlation analysis, and factor analysis, were used to screen the attitude and practice items.The knowledge items were evaluated by experts.Items with over three exclusion criteria were deleted when combining the literal questions.The construct validity of the integrated scale was assessed by factor analysis.A pilot research was conducted by 100 eight-year medical students and nursing undergraduates selecting question entries, and the reliability and validity of the scale were examined.

The scale consisted of three dimensions.A 43-item initiate questionnaire on the scale included 13 items for knowledge, 11 for attitude, and 19 for practice.Two knowledge items were deleted according to expert evaluation.Seven items with more than three exclusion criteria were deleted after statistical analyses.Eventually, 34 items were included in the questionnaire.The Cronbach α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.702.And three common factors were extracted according to exploratory factor analysis.

The reliability and validity of Geriatrics Knowledge, Attitude and Practice scale for eight-year medical students and nursing undergraduates are acceptable, but the knowledge items should be recomposed.

Geriatrics; Knowledge-attitude-practice; Scale Reliability; Validity