Measuring the use of intuition by registered nurses in clinical practice

AIM: To administer the Smith Intuition Instrument to a sample of registered nurses to clarify its factors and test convergent validity. METHODS: The Smith Intuition Instrument (27 items), a subscale of the Miller Intuitiveness Instrument (18 items), and demographic questions, were posted to 1,000 registered nurses in January 2006. RESULTS: With a response rate of 79% (n=79), the findings are preliminary. Principal component factor analysis with orthogonal varimax rotation resulted in four factors accounting for 70.8% of variance: spiritual connections (373%), reassuring feelings (14.6%), physical sensations (12.5%) and bad feelings (6.2%). Eigenvalues ranged from 1.1 to 6.7 and factor loadings ranged from 0.705 to 0.887 An 18-item instrument emerged with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.896 and a range of 0.806 to 0.892 for each factor. Pearson's correlation between the two intuition measures was 0.520. CONCLUSION: Psychometric evaluation demonstrated construct validity, convergent validity and reliability, and clarified the factors. The Smith Intuition Instrument is a valid and reliable tool for measuring nurses' use of intuition in clinical practice.