IMAGERY: A TREATMENT FOR NURSING STUDENT ANXIETY.
Contributors: University of Oklahoma.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 161
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Students often enter nursing with unrealistic ideas of the demands of the nursing curriculum and the reality of these demands generate high levels of anxiety. This study was designed to explore the use of imagery as a treatment for nursing student anxiety. The investigation sought to determine if an audiotape presentation of imagery used repeatedly over a period of four weeks would lower student anxiety. It was anticipated that the treatment groups would have lower measures of anxiety than the control group. It was also anticipated that the imagery treatment with relaxation would be more effective than the imagery treatment alone. Finally, z-scores generated from the nursing examination were anticipated to be higher in the treatment group than in the control group and higher in the imagery/relaxation group than in the imagery-only group.

To test these hypotheses 159 volunteer nursing students were randomly assigned to three experimental groups, two treatment groups and a control group. The imagery treatment was presented on an audiotape using the same imagery for both treatment groups. However, one group was modified with relaxation in association with imagery.

The A-State portion of Speilberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was used as a pre-test. The treatment was used for four weeks. The same state anxiety inventory was repeated at the end of the treatment. Times immediately prior to nursing examination were used to measure the student anxiety levels.

Analysis of Covariance was used to analyze the post-test state anxiety scores and the z-scores obtained from students' test scores on their nursing examinations. Differences at the probability level of.05 were considered to be significant. Chi-square frequency tests were run to determine the similarity of the groups on possible moderating variables.

The difference in post-test anxiety scores by group were significant at the p. =.001 level. The treatment groups were different than the control group, but the two treatment groups were not significantly different from each other. The difference in the z-scores, on the other hand, was found to be nonsignificant. The findings of this study indicate that imagery has a significant effect on student anxiety.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-08, Section: B, page: 2267.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, 1987.

School code: 0169.