Nursing Undergraduates Research Articles

A Psychometric Investigation of Scores on the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal New Form S

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) is a long-established and widely used measure. Recently, Watson and Glaser developed a short version, Form S, as a quickly administered measure of critical thinking. This study used samples of management ( n = 142) and nursing ( n = 123) undergraduates to evaluate the psychometric properties and factor structure of the new Form S as well as the role of gender and social desirability. The results provide only limited support for Form S because of poor to moderate internal-consistency reliability of scores on the five subtests and poor to moderate recovery, in the confirmatory factor analysis and principal components analysis, of the five subtests underlying the critical thinking construct. Scores on Form S were independent of social desirability scores and gender. Although use of Form S can be recommended for some purposes, further psychometric refinement is warranted.

Attitudes Toward Women's Roles in Society: A Replication After 20 Years

In many parts of the world, attitudes towardwomen's roles in society have been changing over the pastseveral decades due to changes in laws regarding womenand educational systems among other significant factors. The present study provides a 20-yearreplication, using the full version of Spence andHelmreich's (1972) well-known Attitudes toward WomenScale (AWS) with samples of mainly white undergraduates including nursing undergraduates at WesternCanadian universities in the mid-1970s and mid-1990s.Results based upon the full and subscale scores show asignificant liberalization in attitudes for both genders since the mid-1970s and a narrowing ofthe gender gap in the 1990s. Finally, the utility of theAWS after some 20-odd years is challenged.