STUDENT EVALUATION OF CLINICAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

and reading of the “Statement to Participants”, faculty had no difficulties in instrument
administration and collection at any of the institutions.
Content Validity. The SECEE inventory addresses all clinical learning environment
issues that were identified in the Table of Specifications (Appendix D), indicating that it reflects
the critical aspects of the learning environment identified by nursing students, faculty, and the
literature, as well as the reviewed samples of Nursing School - Agency contracts. Although
administrative and faculty issues raised by the above-named sources also appear in the Table of
Specifications, they are not addressed by the inventory, as the purpose was to develop an
instrument that focuses on measuring student perceptions of their clinical learning environments.
Inclusion of all clinical learning environment issues identified in the Table of Specifications
within inventory items supports the content validity of SECEE instrument.
Content validity of the scaled portion of the inventory is also supported by student
narrative responses to the open-ended inventory items (requests to identify aspects of the clinical
setting that helped and hindered learning). The forced-choice portion of the inventory had
addressed the majority of student comments. Of the issues students raised that were not
addressed by the current items, a few may be of benefit to include in future instrument revisions.
An item about student/faculty ratio may be beneficial to include, as 19 students identified that
too high a student/faculty ratio hindered their learning. Narrative data would also support adding
a scaled item addressing student comfort with asking questions of both instructor and staff, as
five students stated they felt uncomfortable asking questions in the clinical environment, and
three students stated that feeling comfortable asking questions helped their learning. Several
students raised another issue in response to the open-ended inventory items. Four students noted
that one-on-one interactions with patients were beneficial, and three students cited not seeing
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