The results indicated that the new instrument is sensitive for measuring professional nurses' attitudes towards research and development in nursing. Even if the respondents had a positive attitude towards research and development, there was a poor application in their daily work. Further, the respondent's age, the year of RN examination and acquisition of research skills seemed to be of importance for the attitudes.

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wangensteen s., johansson i.s., björkström m.e. & nordström g. (2010) Critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(10), 2170–2181.AimThe aim of the study was to describe critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses in Norway, and to study whether background data had any impact on critical thinking dispositions.BackgroundCompetence in critical thinking is one of the expectations of nursing education. Critical thinkers are described as well-informed, inquisitive, open-minded and orderly in complex matters. Critical thinking competence has thus been designated as an outcome for judging the quality of nursing education programmes and for the development of clinical judgement. The ability to think critically is also described as reducing the research–practice gap and fostering evidence-based nursing.MethodsA cross-sectional descriptive study was performed. The data were collected between October 2006 and April 2007 using the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. The response rate was 33% (n= 618). Pearson’s chi-square tests were used to analyse the data.ResultsNearly 80% of the respondents reported a positive disposition towards critical thinking. The highest mean score was on the Inquisitiveness subscale and the lowest on the Truth-seeking subscale. A statistically significant higher proportion of nurses with high critical thinking scores were found among those older than 30 years, those with university education prior to nursing education, and those working in community health care.ConclusionNurse leaders and nurse teachers should encourage and nurture critical thinking among newly graduated nurses and nursing students. The low Truth-seeking scores found may be a result of traditional teaching strategies in nursing education and might indicate a need for more student-active learning models.

Nurse leaders play an important role in nurturing newly graduated nurses' critical thinking and assisting them in transferring their positive attitude towards research into research use. Nurse educators play a significant role in supporting, challenging and supervising nursing students to be critical thinkers and strong believers in research utilisation.

Nursing students had an overall positive attitude towards nursing research and their interest in a particular development or research area was the most important variable for their attitudes and expected use of nursing research in the future. Therefore, it would seem to be important to encourage the students' interest in specific development/research areas of nursing during their education. In spite of the nursing students' positive attitudes to nursing research, the study demonstrates the theory-practice gap is still present to some degree.