Development and Psychometric Testing of a Measure to Evaluate Faculty Engagement With Underrepresented Minority Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measure of faculty response patterns to the needs of underrepresented minority (URM) nursing students. METHODS: A mixed-method approach. RESULTS: The 10-item scale was found to be valid (content validity index [CVI] = .81) and reliable (Cronbach's alpha = .81). Principle component factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded a 3-factor solution that explained 66% of the variance in faculty engagement with URM students. The Cronbach's alpha for the 3 factors ranged from .72 to .78. Higher scores were associated with older faculty who had been teaching longer and had more experience teaching URM students. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: The results of the study provide preliminary evidence for the internal consistency and content, criterion-related, and construct validity of the scale.

Methodological challenges collecting parent phone-call healthcare utilization data.

Recommendations by the National Institute of Nursing Research and other groups have strongly encouraged nurses to pay greater attention to cost-effectiveness analysis when conducting research. Given the increasing prominence of translational science and comparative effective research, cost-effective analysis has become a basic tool in determining intervention value in research. Tracking phone-call communication (number of calls and context) with cross-checks between parents and healthcare providers is an example of this type of healthcare utilization data collection. This article identifies some methodological challenges that have emerged in the process of collecting this type of data in a randomized controlled trial: Parent education Through Simulation-Diabetes (PETS-D). We also describe ways in which those challenges have been addressed with comparison data results, and make recommendations for future research.