STUDENT EVALUATION OF CLINICAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

experience in a wide variety of clinical agencies, with only one to three senior students placed at
each site.
Student response consistency (Cronbach alpha coefficient) for the forced-choice
inventory items was .897, with question two removed from analysis as it contained nominal data.
According to Burns and Grove, (1993), alpha levels of .8 to .9 demonstrate response consistency
for the instrument. The range of correlations of individual items with the total ranged from .468
to.789, except for the single item related to the adequacy of orientation, which had a correlation
of .161 with the total.
Factor analysis was also used to determine reliability of the evaluation instrument.
Analysis with varimax rotation resulted in two factors with eigenvalues over 1.0. The reliability
coefficient alpha for factor 1 (learning environment) was .831 and the alpha for factor 2 (agency
or department atmosphere) was .774. Within factor 1, however, there appeared to be two sub-
scales. The coefficient alpha for sub-scale 1 (learning opportunities) was .799 and the alpha for
sub-scale 2 (staff/preceptor issues) was .790. Five of the eleven items included in the factor
analysis loaded above .35 on both identified factors, although they generally loaded somewhat
higher on one factor.
Several steps were taken to demonstrate validity of the SECEE instrument. Review of
the tool by both nursing education faculty and experts in evaluation contributed to the validity of
content. In addition, analysis of variance was performed to discern the discrimination ability of
the instrument. In order to conduct the ANOVA procedure, agency sites identified by fewer than
six respondents were combined into site categories or groups, according to similarity of the type
of nursing care provided at the sites. The resulting ten site groups varied in number of
respondents from seven to twenty-seven, with the majority including thirteen to eighteen student
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