STUDENT EVALUATION OF CLINICAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

Study participants responded “can’t answer” to inventory items with a higher frequency
than that of leaving items blank. Of the 319 completed end of semester inventories, there were
183 occurrences of response number “6” (can’t answer). These occurrences were not evenly
distributed. Of the seven items with a frequency of ten or more can’t answer responses (numbers
2, 5, 8, 9, 21, 22, and 28), four dealt with preceptor or resource nurse issues and three contained
issues related to other students in the clinical learning environment. Thirty-nine explanations for
“can’t answer” responses were provided by students, accounting for 21.3% of the “can’t answer”
responses. Student explanations for the four preceptor/resource nurse items with highest
frequency of “can’t answer” responses were all similar, stating that there had been no preceptor
or resource nurse assigned to the student. Student explanations for “can’t answer” responses to
items related to other students at the clinical site were also similar, citing the absence of other
students at the particular clinical site.
Overall, the total number of student responses that were either open or entered as “can’t
answer” was relatively low, representing less than two percent of total possible responses to the
instrument. Therefore, the impact on data analysis was assumed to be negligible.
The pretest inventory data contained only six open cells among the 127 completed
instruments and 61 “can’t answer” cells. Again less than two percent of total possible data was
either missing or coded as “can’t answer”.
Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive analysis of forced-choice items revealed that overall item means varied from
1.70 to 2.62 on the end of semester inventory administration, indicating that respondents
evaluated the clinical sites positively to some degree (bear in mind that a lower item or scale
score indicates a positive evaluation of that aspect of the clinical learning environment).
49