PERCEPTIONS OF SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES BY NURSING FACULTY IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA.
Contributors: George Mason University.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 173
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Promotion and tenure decisions in most institutions of higher education are based on the faculty members' ability to demonstrate productivity in the tripartite of expectations; teaching, service and research. Activities that are considered scholarly and important to the mission of the institution are often poorly or vaguely defined. Faculty are often confused and frustrated as they attempt to define, and fulfill the expectations of their role. This frustration may lead to role stress and role strain for faculty.

The purpose of this study was to determine activities nursing faculty believe are scholarly and, therefore, important for promotion and tenure. The study also investigated nursing facultys' perceptions of which activities their employing institution identified as scholarly and whether or not the criteria for promotion and tenure were available and appropriate.

The study was built upon the concept of role theory as it relates to role stress and strain (Conway & Hardy, 1988). The results of a survey of 9,996 faculty conducted by Ernest Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation supported the conceptual framework and the design of the survey tool. The tool used was an adaptation of a tool utilized by Baird et al. (1985). It was designed to identify those activities nursing faculty perceived as important and the extent to which faculty believed that the criteria were available, appropriate and important to their role as faculty members.

Findings suggest that there are differences in how faculty view scholarly activities, their importance to promotion and tenure, and to their role as nursing faculty. Clinical practice, clinical teaching and teaching were viewed as being very important to faculty in describing scholarly activities. Faculty believed that their institutions held the activities of national awards, national consultation and co-authoring of a book in higher importance than the faculty. Demographic variables such as type of institution employed, title, years in academia, primary program of teaching, tenure and doctoral preparation influenced beliefs.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-10, Section: B, page: 5091.

Thesis (PH.D.)--GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, 1993.

School code: 0883.