Over the past 7 years, the nursing department at a large academic medical center and the medical school administering the statewide INBRE (Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence) grant have offered a ten-week residential summer research internship to undergraduate (UG) nursing students. The goal of INBRE is to expand capacity for research in UG science students. This internship is the only INBRE program nationally that offers the experience to nursing students. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of the internship experience in increasing the scholarly dissemination, graduate school attendance and research self-efficacy of participating nursing students.
Methods:
The quasi-experimental study, which utilized a repeated measures design, assessed the research self-efficacy of 8 nursing students before and after their summer internship experience. The Nursing Research Self-Efficacy Scale (NURSES) measures confidence in 4 areas: obtaining science-based knowledge resources, critically evaluating qualitative and quantitative research literature, and understanding and applying theory. Response options on a 5-point scale range from “very little” to “quite a lot.” Subscale reliabilities range from .94 to .97 (Swenson-Britt & Berndt, 2013). Participants in the past two INBRE summer internships confidentially completed the NURSES scale via the REDCAP survey platform. The study received approval from the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects.
Results:
Students showed improvements in all aspects of research self-efficacy. The greatest gain was in understanding and applying theory with an increase in mean scores from 2.65 to 4.40 (p < .001; d effect size= 2.18). There were also increases in confidence for obtaining resources (x̅=3.63 to 4.42; p < 05, d =1.13) and ability to critically evaluate qualitative (x̅=2.57 to 3.86, p < .05; d=1.22) and quantitative research literature (x̅=2.65 to 4.04, p < .01; d=.94). All effect sizes are large, indicating that the program was successful in increasing research self-efficacy of students.
Conclusion:
The INBRE program is an innovative clinical-academic partnership that introduces nursing students to the critical link between the bench and the bedside, developing skills and enthusiasm for future nursing research. Our findings provide insight into the relationship between the development of research self-efficacy and participation in the INBRE nurse internship. Study results may prompt nursing schools to adopt components of the program to apply to undergraduate nursing research education.