RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTITUDES TOWARD THE ELDERLY AND THE DIAGNOSTIC REASONING ABILITY OF BACCALAUREATE NURSING STUDENTS.
Contributors: Rutgers University.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 217
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: The purpose of the study was to determine the relationships between attitudes toward the elderly held by generic (pre-registered nurse) baccalaureate nursing students and their ability to use diagnostic reasoning skills to identify health problems of the elderly.

It was predicted that the more favorable the attitude toward the elderly, and the more contact that the student had with the elderly, the greater the number of accurate nursing diagnostic statements and supporting defining characteristics that would be identified.

A correlational design was used to describe the relationship between the independent variables, attitudes toward the elderly as measured by the Robb "Behavioral Intentions Toward the Elderly" Questionnaire and contact with the elderly as measured by a researcher-created instrument, and the dependent variable, the diagnostic reasoning ability measured by the number of accurate nursing diagnostic statements with their supporting defining characteristics recorded on the response sheet after viewing a videotaped health history interview with an elderly person. Critical thinking skills, a control variable, was measured by the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal.

The convenience sample was 36 senior baccalaureate generic nursing students who voluntarily attended two data collection sessions.

Data were analyzed by Pearson's Product Moment Correlation and partial correlation. Significance was set at the p $<$.05 level.

The findings did not support the relationship between favorable attitudes toward the elderly and the ability to write accurate nursing diagnostic statements but did support the relationship between the attitudes toward the elderly and the number of correct defining characteristics listed for each nursing diagnostic statement. The findings did not support the relationship between contact with the elderly and their ability to write accurate nursing diagnostic statements and supporting defining characteristics. This significant finding seems to indicate that the students are able to select the defining characteristics from assessment material but are not able to use information processing theory to cluster the information into meaningful patterns and to label them as nursing diagnostic statements.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-04, Section: B, page: 1896.

Thesis (ED.D.)--RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY - NEW BRUNSWICK, 1993.

School code: 0190.