Personal Growth Attributed by Nursing Students to a Diversity Class.

Although many nursing programs provide diversity training to enhance the understanding of cultural influences on health care, little is known about outcomes. This is due in part to a lack of consensus regarding definitions and measures. The purpose of this study was to examine a set of self-perceptions defined as personal growth, attributed by graduate nursing students (N = 41) to an eight-week diversity course. Participants reported modest levels of personal growth. Educators can adapt the instrument and method of this study to measure student attributions of growth to any aspect of nursing education.

A procedure for coding self-regard from narrative self-descriptions.

Researchers typically obtain numerical measures of self-regard from the self-reports of cooperative participants by administering assessment scales. Selected narrative self-descriptions would become numerical data sources were suitable content analyses devised. This paper documents two descriptive studies (N=46, N=62) that illustrate a basis for suitable designs. That basis is a simple coding procedure in which raters use a 9-point scale to code measures of specific variables from autobiographical narratives. In each study, 5 raters apply content analyses based on the procedure to code their subjective assessments of self-liking, self-competence, and self-regard described in 108 brief narratives (60-150 words). Analysis shows substantial interrater agreement and content validity for the measures of self-regard. This suggests researchers could apply the coding procedure to other data.