The instrument was not designed to measure beliefs, values, or psychological traits but to gather information. The purpose of the survey was to gather valid information on nurses' readiness at a particular time. Before our nationwide study used this instrument, three studies used versions of it: two unpublished dissertations in Louisiana and one pilot study in Louisiana and New York. As we wrote in our article, "Content validity was established by experts in nursing, nursing informatics, and information science" prior to the instrument's first use. Reliability, of course, is critical when confirming that a study's instrument can obtain reproducible (reliable) responses over time when it's used to measure psychological variables. But that was not the case with our survey; responses varied widely, depending on, among other things, how much emphasis the facility placed on research and whether the facility was applying for Magnet recognition. Over time and with different groups, we expected survey questions to yield varied rather than consistent and reproducible data.