Abstract
Evaluation of doctoral education in nursing is needed with the rapid increase in doctoral nursing programs in Japan. This study aimed to compare the evaluations of doctoral nursing education by students, graduates, and faculty. All 46 doctoral nursing programs in Japan were target settings. 127 students who had been in the doctoral program, 24 graduates and 87 faculty members had responded to the survey. A questionnaire with 17 items for program evaluation, 12 items for faculty evaluation, 9 items for resource evaluation, and 3 for overall evaluations was distributed in November and December 2008. Responses to 1 program evaluation item, 2 faculty evaluation items and 4 resource evaluation items indicated significant differences among evaluators. While 79.2% of graduates responded positively that the number of faculty members was sufficient to facilitate learning, only 36.1% of faculty members and 49.6% of students responded affirmatively. Graduates' ratings were the most positive and faculty members were the least positive, especially for infrastructure or equipment such as libraries, computers, and the number of technical and support staff. The significant differences among the evaluators suggested that having evaluators in various roles is important to evaluate the quality of doctoral nursing education.
Highlights
As the tasks of nurses become more advanced and complex, the education of nurses should be provided at an advanced level (McKenna, 2005)
In the proposal of the Central Council for Education entitled “Toward the Construction of a Bachelor Course Education”, field-specific evaluation by a third party is mentioned as an important issue in the future, and universities, colleges, and associated organizations are expected to build a system to guarantee the quality of education specific to each field (Central Council for Education, 2008)
Faculty members were significantly older than the other respondent groups, and the rate of females was significantly higher among students and graduates than among faculty members
Summary
As the tasks of nurses become more advanced and complex, the education of nurses should be provided at an advanced level (McKenna, 2005). In Japan, a quality assurance and accreditation system was introduced in 2004 as a new national evaluation scheme for further development of Japanese higher education. This is a mandatory scheme for universities and colleges that provides mechanisms through which conditions within the institution, such as organizational management and academic activities, can be evaluated by certified evaluation and accreditation organizations. The content of the certified evaluation and accreditation encompasses 11 areas, including curriculum, faculty, resources, and performance of the graduates (National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation, 2009) This accreditation is given to the university as a whole, but departments within the university, such as nursing departments, are not evaluated individually. A trial of utilization of the 360 multisource feedback model (i.e., feedback from multiple evaluators), which is popular in the area of management or industry, was reported for the area of medical education (Berk, 2009). Jahangiri et al (2008) suggested that triangulation in an evaluation was important for assessing teaching effectiveness, but triangulation was not implemented sufficiently in the area of dental educational programs
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