NURSING STAFF DEVELOPMENT EDUCATORS AND RESEARCH UTILIZATION.
Contributors: Widener University School Of Nursing.
Published: 1996
Number of pages: 208
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Education.; Health Sciences, Health Care Management.; Education, Adult and Continuing.
Description: The purposes of this descriptive, correlational study were to: (1) describe the demographic characteristics of nursing staff development educators and their practice settings, (2) assess the nursing staff development educators' level of adoption of Standard XI into their practice, and (3) explore the relationships among the demographic characteristics, setting characteristics, and level of adoption of Standard XI. Standard XI was taken from the ANA (1990) Standards for Nursing Staff Development and specifically addressed expectations that nursing staff development educators incorporate and promote the use of the process of systematic inquiry and the application of both research process and research results to the clinical practice of nursing. Rogers' concepts of diffusion and the adoption-decision process, derived from Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovations, provided the theoretical framework.

A stratified systematic random sampling procedure was used to select 1296 hospitals from the American Hospital Association (1992) AHA Guide to the Health Care Field for 1991. The mailed questionnaire was the Nursing Staff Development Educator Survey (NSDES) instrument composed of 38 response items in three sections, ANA Standard XI: Systematic Inquiry, Demographic Information, and Impact of Survey. After content validity was established by a panel of experts, a convenience sample of 40 nursing staff development educators from metropolitan Philadelphia hospitals was selected for a pilot study. The coefficient of stability (test-retest reliability) at a three week interval was.87. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of internal consistency reliability for the test was a standardized alpha of.75 and for the retest was a standardized alpha of.80. Principal component factoring analysis with varimax rotation was used to validate the instrument constructs for Standard XI and to aggregate the descriptive variables. The two Standard XI variable sets' alpha reliability coefficients were 0.93 for Standard XI and 0.91 for Impact of Survey. The four descriptive variable sets' reliability coefficients ranged from 0.55 to 0.81. Canonical correlation analysis was performed on the six variable sets from the two factor analyses and the size of the hospital. The canonical correlation indicated that Standard Xi accounted for 31% of the variance with five descriptive variable sets. The canonical correlation indicated that descriptive variable sets of decision making in the social system, specialized academic education, cosmopolite professional activities, and size of hospital accounted for 11% of variance with the two Standard XI variable sets. These results substantiated this study's application of the theoretical framework by confirming an interrelationship between the innovation and descriptive characteristics.

The findings of this study described the demographic characteristics of nursing staff development educators and their practice settings, provided an instrument to measure diffusion and adoption of Standard XI, and described the involvement of nursing staff development educators in the role of facilitating the adoption of research findings. Conclusions, nursing implications, and recommendations for future research were generated. This study has begun the process of applying systematic inquiry to the nursing staff development educators' role of facilitating the adoption of research findings.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-10, Section: B, page: 6183.

Thesis (D.N.SC.)--WIDENER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF NURSING, 1996.

School code: 0969.