Evaluating Persistence Among ASN, TBSN, and ABSN Private University Students

Background: The nursing shortage increases as large populations of working bedside nurses retire. In order to replace those positions, prelicensure nursing programs must continue to graduate prepared nursing students. While prelicensure programs continue to produce future nurses, the graduation numbers are not high enough to combat the future shortage due to high attrition rates from prelicensure nursing programs. Method: Senior associate degree nursing students, traditional bachelor’s degree nursing students, and accelerated bachelor degree nursing students participated in the study. A modified version of the College Persistence Questionnaire was used. Results: Findings indicated no significance difference among prelicensure student perceptions of persistence in the six areas on the College Persistence Questionnaire. Prelicensure nursing students’ ranked degree commitment, institutional commitment, scholastic conscientiousness, and support services above the mean BISR question rank. Conclusion: To increase graduates, prelicensure nursing programs need to evaluate students who have been successful throughout the program.

The Use of the Barriers to Baccalaureate Nursing Education Instrument Among ADN Students: Purpose, Reliability, and Validity

Background and PurposeChallenges abound as to the goal of “80% BSN by 2020.” This study reports the use and the psychometric properties of the Barriers to Baccalaureate Nursing Education instrument among associate degree nursing students.MethodsAnalyses included content validity, component analysis with oblique rotation, and hypothesis testing.ResultsFour factors with total variance explained of 61.24% emerged: Dispositional, Situational, and two Institutional barriers. Reliability coefficients ranged .62–.88. Group differences in subscale scores based on educational level, number of dependents, hours worked, and age were found along with correlations.ConclusionsThe instrument demonstrated adequate validity and reliability. A structural framework toward understanding the barriers to baccalaureate education among students and nurses is provided. Future studies should include psychometric testing for further refinement, validity, and reliability.