Abstract

BackgroundPsychometric studies of the FACES III scale in Spanish-speaking countries show a lack of agreement on the factorial structure of the scale. In addition, most of the studies have only performed exploratory analyses of its factorial structure.ObjectiveThe objective of the present study was to confirm the structure and factorial invariance of the FACES III scale in nursing and obstetric students from Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico.MethodsA total of 3303 students from the four countries participated in this study (Colombia = 1559, Chile = 1224, Peru = 215, Mexico = 305).ResultsThe results of the study showed that the Bi-factor model presents the best-fit indexes to the data from Colombia, Chile, and Mexico, but not from Peru. In addition, it was found that this model showed evidence of being strictly invariant among the three countries in the sequence of the invariance models proposed: metric invariance (Delta RMSEA = .000), scalar (Delta RMSEA = .008), and strict (Delta RMSEA = .008). The bi-factor model also showed adequate reliability indexes in the three countries.ConclusionIt is concluded that the FACES III scale shows adequate psychometric performance under a bi-factor model in nursing and obstetric students from Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. The lack of fit of the model in Peru could be associated with the small sample size.