No nationally available objective instrument is currently recognized as predictive of successful nursing program completion. Such a measure, available prior to program entry, might guide admissions procedures and be used to counsel applicants.
This longitudinal descriptive-correlational study investigated the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal as a potential predictor of success as measured by a passing score on the NCLEX examination for nurse registration.
From a southern Arizona population of 177 baccalaureate nursing students who graduated between December 1982 and May 1984, 145 graduates comprised the volunteer sample. These participants completed the Watson-Glaser Appraisal during their first week as upper-division nursing students, consented to participation in the study, and permitted reporting of NCLEX scores for use in statistical analyses. Fifty-three participants from this group repeated the Watson-Glaser Appraisal in the final month prior to graduation.
Pearson Correlation for first semester total WatsonGlaser score and NCLEX score was .31 (p= .002). There was no significant change in total Watson-Glaser scores between first and last semesters as demonstrated by t-test. Multiple Regression analysis demonstrated that first semester Watson-Glaser scores and Entry GPAs together accounted for 15% of the variance in NCLEX scores (p-.OOl). Continuing data collection and analysis will expand the study population with 42 current graduates.
Findings suggest that this instrument is not a valid measure of specific cognitive processes underlying the Nursing Process. Findings support the usefulness of the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal as a potential pre-admission predictor of nursing success.
The articles in this issue reflect a mutually rewarding relationship between nursing and anthropology over the past twenty years. In the late 1960s, such nurse-anthropologists as Agnes Aamodt, Eleanor Bauwens, Pamela Brink, Liz Byerly, Jody Glittenberg, Margarita Kay, Oliver Osborne, and Antoinette Ragucci were utilizing both fields in teaching, research and practice. Anthropology and nursing have a lot in common, such as a holistic view of human beings and a humanistic rather than positivistic stance. In "Nursing: A Social Policy Statement" (American Nurses' Association, 1980) nursing was defined as "…the diagnosis and treatment of human responses to actual or potential health problems" (emphasis ours). "Human responses to" differentiates nursing from medicine, and nursing potentially includes the whole range of human responses and the social, cultural, psychological, and environmental factors that affect such responses.
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