The Exercise of Self-Care Agency Scale

This study examined the perceptions of the exercise of self-care in nursing students in Japan. An instrument to measure exercise of self-care agency developed by Kearney and Fleischer was used. The instrument was translated from English into Japanese and administered to a convenience sample of 461 students who were enrolled in nursing and early childhood education for the purpose of comparison. Psychometric properties of the Japanese version of the instrument were satisfactory. The results from the study were compared with those from studies in the United States and Sweden in which the same instrument was administered to nursing students. Differences and similarities between these studies will shed some light on cross-cultural directives for international nursing research on the exercise of self-care agency.