Aims and design
This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study employing a path analysis approach to determine the mediating effect of nurses' organizational commitment in the relationship between psychological capital and organizational citizenship behavior during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Data collection and sample
From January 2021 to May 2021, convenient sampling was used to select clinical nurses from 6 designated hospitals for treatment of COVID-19 in Chengdu, China. We first contacted the hospital administrator and obtained permission for investigation. The survey was mainly conducted through the network platform, and each hospital had a volunteer responsible for the investigation feedback and follow-up work of the hospital, and another research assistant monitored the network platform at any time during the survey. The electronic questionnaire included a unified guide to introduce the purpose, variables and filling requirements, and pointed out that it was deemed informed consent to fill in without omission and submit the questionnaire, and the survey was anonymous and voluntary. If there were problems with the quality of the questionnaire, the research assistant would quickly contact the volunteer and asked him to help strengthen the communication with the respondents to ensure the reliability of the data. A total of 800 questionnaires were distributed and 746 valid questionnaires were recovered, with an effective recovery rate of 93.25%.
The participants work in different departments, including internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics and infection department, etc. The inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) to have obtained the nurse certificate; (b) to be engaged in clinical nursing for ≥ 1 year; (c) informed consent and voluntary participation in this study. The exclusion criteria were as follows: (a) informal staff, such as refresher nurses; (b) nurses who were not on duty during the investigation; (c) nurses suffering from major physical diseases or mental disorders during the investigation; (d) nurses who experienced major family changes during the survey.
Ethical consideration
This study has been approved by the XX (No. XX).
Measures
Social-demographic information questionnaire
The social-demographic information questionnaire included gender, age, education level, marital status, years of work experience, work hours per day, sleep hours per day, monthly income and participation in mental health-related training, with a total of 9 items.
Psychological Capital Questionnaire-24 (PCQ-24)
PCQ-24 compiled by Luthans et al (2007), includes four dimensions of self-efficacy, hope, resiliency and optimism, with a total of 24 items, including three reverse scoring questions, items 13, 20 and 23 respectively. Participants were asked to answer with a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree", score 1-6 points respectively, and the total score was the sum of the scores of each item. The higher the score, the higher the level of psychological capital. Through literature review, it was found that PCQ-24 had been proved to have good reliability and validity in Chinese nurse population (Zhou et al., 2018). In the current study, the Cronbach’s α reliability values of PCQ-24 was 0.939, and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of PCQ-24 based on the four factor model showed that the fitting degree of the model was good (c2/df = 2.498, GFI = 0.942, AGFI = 0.921, NFI = 0.958, CFI = 0.974, TLI = 0.967 and RMSEA = 0.045), indicating that PCQ-24 had good reliability and validity in this study sample and could be used for data analysis.
Chinese version Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (C-OCQ)
The original version of OCQ was developed by Chang et al (2009) to measure nurses' organizational commitment level, including three dimensions: value commitment, effort commitment and retention commitment, with a total of 12 items. C-OCQ translated by Cheng et al (2017), and participants were asked to answer with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree", they received 1-5 points respectively. The higher the score, the higher the level of organizational commitment. It was found that C-OCQ had been proved to have good reliability and validity in Chinese nurse population, and score of 12-24 indicated a low level of organizational commitment, a score of 25-47 indicated a medium level, and a score of 48-60 indicated a high level (Tai et al., 2021). In this study, the Cronbach’s α reliability values of C-OCQ was 0.949, and the CFA of C-OCQ based on the three factor model showed that the fitting degree of the model was good (c2/df = 4.396, GFI = 0.964, AGFI = 0.926, NFI = 0.981, CFI = 0.985, TLI = 0.974, RMSEA = 0.068), indicating that C-OCQ had good reliability and validity in this study sample and could be used for data analysis.
Nurses' Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (NOCBS)
NOCBS compiled by Wan et al (2015), includes five dimensions: self-development, responsibility consciousness, actively serving, helping colleagues, and organizational identity, with a total of 24 items. Participants were asked to answer with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "very inconsistent" to "very consistent", they received 1-5 points respectively. It was found that NOCBS had been proved to have good reliability and validity in Chinese nurse population, and if the average score of items reached 3, it was a medium level, and the higher the score, the more organizational citizenship behavior of nurses (Du et al., 2020). In this study, the Cronbach’s α reliability values of NOCBS was 0.951, and the CFA of NOCBS based on the five factor model showed that the fitting degree of the model was good (c2/df = 3.721, GFI = 0.919, AGFI = 0.883, NFI = 0.966, CFI = 0.975, TLI = 0.967, RMSEA = 0.060), indicating that NOCBS had good reliability and validity in this study sample and could be used for data analysis.
Statistical analysis
SPSS version 23.0, AMOS version 23.0 were used to analyze the data. Internal consistency and CFA were used to test the reliability and validity of PCQ-24, C-OCQ and NOCBS. Descriptive analysis, independent sample T-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to describe and compare the scores of organizational citizenship behavior of nurses with different social-demographic information. Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine whether there was a correlation between nurses' psychological capital, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. Structural equation model was used to explore the mediating role of organizational commitment between psychological capital and organizational citizenship behavior. The c2/df < 5, Tacker-Lewis index (TLI), comparative fit index (CFI), incremental fit index (IFI), relative fit index (RFI) and normal fit index (NFI) > 0.90, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ≤ 0.08 are considered to be reasonable model fitting. When testing the significance of mediation effect, the number of repeated sampling was set to 5000 and the confidence interval was set to 95%, and when the confidence interval of each path coefficient does not contain 0, it indicated that the mediation effect was significant (Hayes, 2013). In this study, p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant (two-tailed test).