Research Competencies Assessment Instrument for Nurses: Preliminary Psychometric Properties

Research skills for university students' thesis in E-learning: Scale development and validation in Peru

Background

The aims of the study was to evaluate the psychometric properties and to characteristics of a scale on research skills as well as to characterize the experience of university thesis students using information databases (i.e., Scopus or Web of Science) and bibliographic reference managers.

Methods

A sample of 1598 university students from five departments, acroos the different campuses of one Peruvian university. The psychometric properties of the instrument were evaluated using factor analysis and measurement invariance according to sex and age groups. In addition, an internal consistency analysis was conducted for scale reliability using Cronbach's alpha, ordinal alpha, and the omega index.

Results

Our study identified that the unidimensional model with correlated errors showed adequate indicators of reliability and goodness of fit, with the exception of the RMSEA, which shows values higher than 0.08. Measurement invariance by sex and age group was present. The majority of university students in E-learning showed use of the bibliographic manager Mendeley (52.13%), low ability to use information databases such as Scopus (22.24%) or Web of Science (17.26%), and the least skilled research skills were in formulating the problem, objectives, and hypotheses (51.63%) and carrying out data analysis and processing using statistical techniques (49.37%).

Conclusions

The conclusions of the study were that the 8-item research skills instrument presents acceptable psychometric indicators in Peruvian university students in thesis courses. Likewise, a scarce use of global databases, the approach to the research topic, and carrying out its statistical processing.

Instruments for measuring nursing research competence: a protocol for a scoping review

INTRODUCTION

Nursing research competence of nursing personnel has received much attention in recent years, as nursing has developed as both an independent academic discipline and an evidence-based practiing profession. Instruments for appraising nursing research competence are important, as they can be used to assess nursing research competence of the target population, showing changes of this variable over time and measuring the effectiveness of interventions for improving nursing research competence. There is a need to map the current state of the science of the instruments for nursing research competence, and to identify well validated and reliable instruments. This paper describes a protocol for a scoping review to identify, evaluate, compare and summarise the instruments designed to measure nursing research competence.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

The scoping review will be conducted following Arksey and O'Malley's methodological framework and Levac et al's additional recommendations for applying this framework. The scoping review will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews checklist. The protocol is registered through the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/ksh43/). Eight English databases and two Chinese databases will be searched between 1 December 2020 and 31 December 2020 to retrieve manuscripts which include instrument(s) of nursing research competence. The literature screening and data extraction will be conducted by two researchers, independently. A third researcher will be involved when consensus is needed. The COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments methodology will be used to evaluate the methodological quality of the included studies on measurement properties of the instruments, as well as the quality of all the instruments identified.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Ethical approval is not needed. We will disseminate the findings through a conference focusing on nursing research competence and publication of the results in a peer-reviewed journal.