Exploration of the attitudinal changes of a group of collegiate nursing students toward psychiatric nursing care activities

Because of the increasing demand for nurses in psychiatric nursing, it is the responsibility of nursing education to see that students have gained those attitudes which will prepare or help them to function effectively in a therapeutic role with patients who are mentally ill. The review of literature revealed a need for more research on the attitudinal changes of students which occurred during an educational program. The literature also indicated that some changes in the students' attitudes had occurred during the course of study, but the variables determining these attitudinal changes have not been clearly defined as yet since research in this area was limited and since there was a lack of adequate instruments for measuring these changes. The present modified longitudinal study was designed to explore the changes in the attitudes of a group of collegiate nursing students toward the activities involved in psychiatric nursing care. A 50 Item Q-Sort was given to the students before and after they had completed a basic course in psychiatric nursing. Both testings were not carried out under the most ideal conditions as were originally planned since difficulties in scheduling these tests on the desired dates arose. The twenty-three nursing students were asked to sort fifty cards, each bearing statements of activities connected with psychiatric nursing care, into nine piles according to their relative importance. The items which were considered to be most important were placed in the ninth pile, and the rest of the cards were rated down through the piles to the least important items in pile one. After the data was collected and tabulated, t values and rank correlation coefficients were computed for the five main categories of clustered items and for the individual items as well. The t values showed whether the differences between the first and second test scores were statistically significant or not; while the rank correlation coefficients indicated the consistency of the student's responses to the individual items from the first to second test. The statistical analyses were carried out in order to test the following null hypothesis: (1) There will be no significant differences between the amount of emphasis which the nursing students place on the five categories of clustered items before and after they have had a basic course in psychiatric nursing; (2) there will be no significant differences between the degree of importance placed on the individual items of nursing activities on the first and second sorts; and (3) there will be no significant differences between the rand correlations on the first and second test scores for the individual items.