Establishing Norms For The Instrument Of Competencies Of Autonomous Learning Of Nursing Students

With the continuous emergence and update of new knowledge and cutting-edgetechnologies in the field of medical care,it has been the main task of higher nursing education that cultivating high qualify nursing talents with a good competence of autonomous learning for lifelong learning and upgrading himself/herself with the advance of the times.To achieve this goal,we need to know the original competence of autonomous learning and learning deficiencies of the nursing students,to find out the factors that affect the results of cultivating the competence of autonomous learning,and to evaluate the achievements of that cultivation.It is,therefore,necessary toscientifically and qualitativelyappraise the competence of autonomous learning of nursing students.Because the competence of autonomous learning,as a psychological characteristic,is implicit and difficult to measure directly,the research team has independently developed "The Scale of Competencies of Autonomous Learning of Nursing Undergraduates" in previous studies.The scale has been national wide used and become an effective instrument of exploring the competence of autonomous learning of nursing undergraduates and its relevant factors and evaluating the achievements of the cultivation of that competence.However,since the norm has not been established,the evaluation of the scale cannot provide comparably universal norms.The scale cannot estimate the level in the whole of the competence of autonomous learning of the tested students before and after the intervention through the score obtained,and it was difficult to find out the learning deficiencies or explain the effect of the intervention clearly.Based on the requirements of the practical application of the scale,this study analyzed the secondary data from the national wide applications of the scale,established general and classification norms of "The Scale of Competencies of Autonomous Learning of Nursing Undergraduates",and provided comparably universal norms for estimating the competence of autonomous learning of nursing students.Part one: An overview of the research background and current status.Referencing the achievements of previous studies,we defined some key concepts,e.g.The competence of autonomous learning and norm;briefly introduced the framework of the competencies of autonomous learning of nursing undergraduates and its factors;and introduced and analyzed the current research status of the scales and the established norms of scale relating to autonomous learning.Part two: The establishment of databases and the test of data characteristics.Based on the scores gained from the scale during the national wide applications from 2007 to 2015,we established databases,generated variables for direct analyzing,and screened and cleaned data by removing 141 pieces of data,i.e.the data containing missing values,error values,outliers,the data with all the chosen options were all the same or all the values were regularly increasing or decreasing,and the data collected from the schools that the average score is too low and with no representativeness.Finally,we made a large sample with representativeness of 4309 cases.We created some sub-databases,e.g.database of the eastern,middle,and western regions of China,database of city level,database of sex,database of education background,for the scale quality inspection,the further data representative,normalityandtime stability test of these 4309 cases and all of these had laid a solid foundation for the later data analysis and the establishment of norm.Part three: The reliability and validity of the scale applied in different groups.We evaluated with SPSS 21.0 the Cronbach's ? coefficient and the split-half reliability of the scale in the whole nursing students and the groups of different sex,education background,region,and city-level.We also used AMOS17.0 to build up a second order structural equation model based on the theoretical model of our previous studies to test its construct validity.Result shows that in addition to the central region,the reliability is greater than 0.7,in addition to the central and western regions,the GFI are greater than 0.8,and the GFI of central and western regions greater than 0.79 as also.This step evaluated the universality of applying the scale.Part four: The establishment of general and classification norms of "The Scale of Competencies of Autonomous Learning of Nursing Undergraduates".The demographic influencing factors of the scoring of the scaledetermined by multivariate analysis of variance,Single factor analysisand multiple linear regression analysis are region,education level and grade.So,we classified the norm group according to the influencing factors,and finally establish the average norm,percentile rank norm,cutoff score norm and standard score norm for general and classification norm groups in different region or different education level and grade,based on the literature review and expert opinions.We also discussed the scientificity,the deficiencies and the remedies in the process of norm establishing.We demonstrated the application of the norms of the scale with examples,and detailed described the three functions of norm:(1)describe the relative position of the subjects scores among the norm groups;(2)compare the results of the tested subjects from different norm groups;(3)compare the results of the same subjects obtained from different tests.Part five:Analysis of the status quo of the competencies ofautonomous learning of nursing students in China based on the secondary data.According to the score of each item,dimension and subscale,we can know that,asfor the nursing students' autonomous learning ability,their self-management ability and learningcooperation ability were better thanthe information ability.In view of thedemographicinfluencingfactorsabove,differences between the sample groups are discussed by categories:thecompetencies of autonomous learning of students in the eastern regionwas better than students in the central and western regions;the competencies of autonomous learning of the studentsin junior or senior year are at a higher levelthan the freshman and Sophomore;Comparing to secondary students of nursing,the score of undergraduate and junior college nursing students are significantly higher.