Journal of Professional Nursing
Original ArticleDiversifying the Pipeline Into Doctoral Nursing Programs: Developing the Doctoral Advancement Readiness Self-Assessment
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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Pursuing a doctorate in nursing: Implications for underrepresented minority nurses
2022, Journal of Professional NursingCitation Excerpt :Table 2 provides a snapshot of additional considerations to help compliment the decision-making process. Prior investigators, (Dewitty et al., 2016), developed and validated a Doctoral Readiness Self-Assessment for Doctoral Study. Their 12-item tool, based on Readiness Theory, was developed to help compliment the self-reflection process, determine readiness for doctoral education and identify predictors of and barriers to successful completion of a doctoral nursing program.
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