Eun Kyung Kim1, Se Young Kim2, Myun Sook Jung3, Jong Kyung Kim4, Sun Ju You5

1Department of Nursing, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, Korea 2Department of Nursing, Changwon National University, Changwon, Korea 3College of Nursing, Institute of Health Science, Gyungsang National University, Jinju, Korea 4College of Nursing, Dankook University, Cheonan, Korea 5Department of Nursing, Mokpo National University, Muan, Korea


Background: The manager's empowering leadership has been reported to have a positive impact on employees' psychological empowerment, motivation, creativity, and increase commitment and turnover intentions. However, there is a lack of Korean version of empowering leadership tools that have been verified for validity and reliability, so that they can be applied to Korean nursing organizations. The aim of this study was to develop the Korean version of Empowering Leadership Questionnaire (K-ELQ) and to examine its’ psychometric properties.
Methods: Translation of the K-ELQ was validated through forward-backward translation. Participants were 322 staff nurses working in four general hospitals in South Korea. To test reliability and validity, content validity index, Cronbach’s alpha, Pearson’s correlation, confirmatory factor analysis were used.
Results: The K-ELQ consisted of 34 items to evaluate empowering leadership of nursing managers. Construct validity of K-ELQ was verified by confirmatory factor analysis (CMIN/DF=2.72, Root Mean square Residual= 0.03, Goodness of Fit Index=0.91, Normal Fit Index=0.87). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.98. Criterion validity compared to the psychological empowerment of nurses showed significant correlation (r=0.19, P=0.001).
Conclusions: The K-ELQ is an appropriate instrument to measure empowering leadership of nursing managers. Further studies are needed to utilize K-ELQ in leadership education and to identify related factors of empowering leadership.
Korean J Health Promot 2017;17(4):275-281

Keywords: Power, Leadership, Validation studies, Nurses