| The purpose of this study was to do a descriptive analysis of the concept, faculty scholarship, as defined by nurse faculty in institutions of higher education. A conceptual model incorporating the variables, career stage as a specific instance of adult development theory, doctoral degree, size and types of nursing programs and faculty activities, guided this study. An investigator developed questionnaire, The Faculty Scholarship Questionnaire, was mailed to 642 randomly selected doctorally prepared nurse faculty members of Sigma Theta Tau International. Completed questionnaires were returned by 472 of 595 eligible subjects yielding a response rate of 79.3%. Semi-structured telephone interviews with five faculty representing five faculty career stages provided illustrative qualitative data.;Results of this descriptive study suggest that faculty scholarship is a multi-dimensional concept. Principal component analysis with Varimax rotation defined nurse faculty scholarship in terms of five factors, (1) teacher, clinician, public servant, (2) author, (3) referee, (4) presenter and (5) researcher, and 35 behaviors. Chi square, measures of central tendency and dispersion, and ranking procedures were used to explore ratings of scholarship behaviors by nurse faculty of different personal and institutional characteristics. An association between nurse faculty beliefs regarding scholarship behaviors and their reported participation in these behaviors was not demonstrated by this study. Nurse faculty, representing five career stages, three doctoral degrees, and institutions that varied in respect to size and type of nursing programs, demonstrated limited variability in their definitions of scholarship.;Findings of this study have implications for faculty and administrators seeking to document nurse faculty activities in accordance with standards of higher education. Nurse faculty definitions of scholarship provided by this study are consistent with definitions of scholarship in higher education literature. However, nurse faculty in this study did not report performance of scholarly activities consistent with their definitions. Further exploration of the concept, faculty scholarship, and its achievement by nurses is warranted. |
