Nurses must understand and have positive attitudes toward research to implement evidence-based practice (EBP) findings in clinical practice (Halabi, 2016; Keib, Cailor, Kiersma, & Chen, 2017). Both education about research methodology and positive attitudes toward research significantly increase nursing students’ application of EBP (Hutchinson & Johnston, 2006; Johansson, Fogelberg-Dahm, & Wadensten, 2010). Likewise, students with negative attitudes toward research tend to not participate in the generation of new knowledge or use empirical findings to support patient care (Halabi, 2016; Unver, Semerci, Ozkan, & Avcibasi, 2017). Thus, in order to engage in EBP upon entry to professional practice; it is essential that nursing students develop positive attitudes toward research during their undergraduate education (Halabi, 2016; Unver et al., 2017). The purposes of this integrative review were to determine: undergraduate nursing students’ perceptions and attitudes toward nursing research and the factors that influence these outcomes.
Methods:
An integrative review of the literature was conducted using the Whittemore and Knafl’s (2005) updated methodology using the CINAHL, PubMed, and ERIC databases. Key terms used for the search included various combinations of: students, attitudes, perceptions, research, undergraduate, subjects, nursing, and participation. In addition to the database searches, ancestral searches of reference lists of all relevant articles were also performed; reference lists were screened for titles which included the key terms identified above.
Results:
A total of 15 studies (11 quantitative, two qualitative, and two mixed methods) were identified for inclusion in this integrative review. One-third of the available literature was published in the past two years. Sixty percent of the studies originated from outside the U.S. Overall, nursing students saw the value in nursing research and generally had positive attitudes; although some students found the research process to be arduous and difficult to understand. Student attitudes were affected by several factors such as age, level in nursing program, prior research experience, and educational interventions with conflicting results. Additionally, several valid and reliable tools were identified to measure nursing students’ attitudes towards nursing research.
Conclusion:
Due to limited and conflicting available data, more research is needed to definitively determine what factors affect nursing students’ attitudes toward nursing research. Furthermore, educational best practices have not been established to support positive attitudes because most studies evaluated teaching strategies in isolation without comparison to one another, thus more research is needed to determine pedagogical best practices for teaching research to support positives attitudes toward research in undergraduate nursing students.