Abstract

This study aims at developing a questionnaire to measure nursing students' communication skills and determining its validity and reliability. This methodology was conducted in two stages. At the first stage, 51 questionnaire items were selected through former texts and studies. At the second stage, formal validity and content validity of the questionnaire was assessed quantitatively and qualitatively and the validity of the structure was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis. During the stage for determining the formal validity in the qualitative method, content validity ratios method and during the quantitative method of impact score, respectively 11; 8 and 4 items were excluded and finally 28 tool items were remained. These items lies in 5 factors: conscious start(3 items), verbal and nonverbal communication skills (9 items), external and internal coordination (6 items), respect to client (5 items) and unconditional client acceptance (5 items).The designed questionnaire has the appropriate validity and reliability to be used for assessing nursing students' communication skills in the studied society. © 2014 AENSI Publisher All rights reserved.