IPNG/IPG/Council Health Guidelines

Guidelines for Use: Index of Professional Nursing Governance, Index of Professional Governance, or Council Health

To use the IPNG, IPG, or Council Health, please follow the instructions below. Please note that the IPNG or IPG cannot be interpreted without a subscale key, which will be provided once permission is granted. The reduced 50-item IPNG 3.0 and the IPG 3.0 became available in June, 2017. Council Health was made available in July, 2017.

Researchers, administrators, and clinicians who use any version of the IPNG, IPG, or Council Health agree to:

  • Formally request use of the IPNG, IPG, or Council Health by sending an email to info@sharedgovernance.org or send a letter to the Forum for Shared Governance, PO Box 8132, Hobe Sound, FL 33475.
  • Send a description of the intended use of the instruments along with the request that includes contact information for a point person, including phone number and postal address.
  • Follow up the request with a phone call to (610) 805-8635 to finalize permission.
  • Report subsequent findings and/or raw data from the use of the IPNG, IPG, or Council Health, upon request, to author, Robert Hess, PhD, RN, FAAN, for tracking use, evaluating the instruments, and for possible inclusion in research publication without identification of the institution.
  • Credit the use and author of the IPNG  or PG to Dr. Robert Hess , or of the Council Health survey to Drs. Jennifer RHeingans, Robert Hess, Diana Swihart, and Stacey Brull, in any publication of the research involving these survey instruments. If you plan to publish the results of your research, please read this helpful Dissemination FAQ.

The use of any of the instruments is free for academic researchers and students. For the IPNG or IPG, a nominal $500 registration charge is assessed for a each healthcare institution; sliding-scale fees are assessed for multi-organizational systems. For use of the Council Health survey, an annual charge of $125 is assessed for each organization for unlimited use. Fee-based data support and consultation are available. Payment can be made by sending a check to the Forum for Shared Governance or calling in a credit card number.

A 2014 study, Measuring Perceptions of Shared Governance in Clinical Practice: Psychometric Testing of the RN-Focused Index of Professional Nursing Governance, updates and confirms the validity and reliability of the IPNG, correlating scores with measures of satisfaction obtained from National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQ), job enjoyment, and the desire to recommend the hospital as a place of enjoyment. The original psychometric properties from the development of the 1994 IPNG instrument are reported in Dr Hess’s 1998 article, Measuring Nursing Governance.

The development and properties of the Council Health tool are described in the recently published Journal of Nursing Administration article, Council Health to Transform Shared Governance Processes and Practices.