Elsevier

Journal of Professional Nursing

Volume 32, Issue 5, Supplement, September–October 2016, Pages S68-S75
Journal of Professional Nursing

Original Article
Diversifying the Pipeline Into Doctoral Nursing Programs: Developing the Doctoral Advancement Readiness Self-Assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.03.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Many doctoral students never fully assess their readiness for a doctoral program.

  • Interest, readiness, and support were identified as three factors that may predict enrollment in doctoral programs.

  • Interest and readiness factor helps determine preparedness to pursue an advanced degree.

  • Support factor helps respondents assess backing from important reference groups.

This article presents the development and psychometric analysis of the Doctoral Readiness Self-Assessment for Doctoral Study. This survey was developed as the first step of a Web-based, on-line mentoring platform for nurses who are considering a doctoral degree program. By identifying and anticipating the predictors and barriers of success in doctoral nursing education, including practical (finances, time, geographical restriction) and personal factors (motivation, attitudes, perceived ability to navigate the application process), students are guided through a self-reflective process to determine readiness. Factor analysis revealed that interest, readiness, and support represent 3 distinct factors that may be used for additional analysis to predict future enrollment in doctoral nursing degree programs. The internal reliability analysis revealed that removing 3 items from the 15-item scale increased Cronbach's alpha from 0.75 to 0.80, and these factors explained 51.25% of variance. The self-assessment results can inform faculty's work as they mentor and guide students through the application, admission, and financial support processes for doctoral study.

Section snippets

Background and Significance

A key recommendation from the 2011 Institute of Medicine Report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, was that nurses achieve higher levels of education to respond to demands of the health care system (Institute of Medicine, 2011). Specifically, this report recommended doubling the number of nurses with a doctoral degree by 2020. Despite the slow growth in doctoral nursing programs in the 1980s and 1990s, the number of programs and program graduates increased substantially

Literature Review

A search of the literature did not reveal a conceptual framework that focused on student readiness for graduate-level studies. However, readiness theory provides context for a discussion of student readiness for undergraduate studies but may also apply to graduate-level studies.

Method

The purpose of this study was to examine a survey instrument used to assess interest in pursuing an advanced nursing degree. The instrument contained two primary questions. The first question stated, “There are a lot of reasons why people consider advanced degrees in nursing. Please rate your level of agreement with each of the following statements,” and asked survey participants to respond to nine statements such as “I want to advance my career. An advanced degree will open doors for me.” The

Results

Most items had high item response rates; however, demographic items had lower response rates resulting in incomplete demographic information. The self-reported age of 465 participants who provided this information ranged from 21 to 62 years with a median age of 36 years. Eighty-six (17%) of the 502 participants who self-reported gender information were male, and 416 (83%) were female. Additional demographic information is provided in Table 1.

Discussion

This examination of the psychometric properties of the Doctoral Readiness Self-Assessment revealed that the original 15 items used in two survey questions (reasons to pursue an advanced degree and reasons for considering an advanced degree) could be reduced to 12 items representing three factors: interest in an advanced degree (interest), readiness to pursue an advanced degree (readiness), and support for pursuing an advanced degree (support).

The interest items could help respondents gauge

Recommendations and Conclusions

The psychometric properties of the DAN Readiness Self-Assessment for Doctoral Study were determined using a sample of accelerated second-degree nursing students who received an NCIN scholarship. Efforts to continue the baseline work presented in the study should include several next steps.

One next step would be to replicate the survey with graduates from traditional-paced nursing programs in order to determine if the properties still hold. Another next step would be to replicate the survey with

Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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