Abstract: Objective: To translate the English version of the Caring Assessment Tool-administration (CAT-admin) scale into Chinese and evaluate its reliability and validity. Methods: After obtaining the consent of the author of the source scale, procedure of double back translation and cross-cultural adaptation was conducted. The Chinese version of the CAT-admin scale was tested to 356 nurses to evaluate the reliability and validity of the scale. Results: The Chinese version of the CAT-admin included 36 items and three dimensions, which explained 73.542% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated all fitting indexes were basically good. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.965 and the Cronbach’s α of each factor was 0.926-0.960. The split half reliability of the total scale was 0.875 and 0.907-0.952 for each dimension. The test-retest reliability was 0.933 for the total scale and 0.802-0.949 for each dimension. Item-Content Validity Index (I-CVI) ranged from 0.83 to 1.00 and Scale-Content Validity Index (S-CVI) was 0.89. Conclusion: The Chinese version of the CAT-admin scale showed good reliability and validity, and can be used as a valid tool to evaluate staff nurses’ perceptions of nurse-managers caring competence in China.

Key words: nurse manager; caring; nurse; reliability; validity