STUDENT EVALUATION OF CLINICAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

sites having few respondents. If individual site data were needed for settings having very few
students, it would be necessary to review inventories rating these settings individually, or to
combine data for two or more semesters in order to achieve a larger sample size per site for
quantitative analysis.
Research Questions
The original SECEE inventory appeared to adequately reflect nursing students’
perceptions of some aspects of the clinical learning environment, based on data from students
enrolled in one nursing education program. However, the inventory did not reflect the full range
of factors impacting the clinical learning environment. As there continued to be no other
published instruments addressing student perceptions of the clinical education environment, the
investigator chose to continue refinement and testing of the SECEE inventory. The goals of
inventory revision were to produce an instrument that was a valid and reliable measure of student
perceptions, that reflected more fully the range of environmental impacts on student learning,
and that was practically useful to nursing educators. Based on the results from administration of
the original SECEE inventory and on further review of the applied learning environment
literature, the following questions were posed for continued research.
1. Is it possible to revise the original SECEE instrument to include all issues critical to the
nursing clinical education environment, while maintaining brevity and practicality of use
by nursing educators?
2. Is the revised SECEE inventory a reliable instrument for measuring student perceptions
of their clinical (applied) learning environment?
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