Nursing students' attitudes toward research: An integrative review

Objective: This paper describes the state of the science related to undergraduate nursing students' attitudes toward research. Design: The updated integrative review method was used to systematically examine the published nursing literature about students' attitudes toward nursing research. Data sources: Data sources for this review included: the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PubMed, and Education Resources Information Center databases. Review methods: Database searches identified 207 articles. Abstracts were screened for relevance, and, if appropriate, the full article was obtained and reviewed. Ancestral searches of reference lists yielded an additional 29 articles, thus a total of 236 articles were screened for this review. Results: This comprehensive screening process yielded a total of 11 quantitative, 2 qualitative, and 2 mixed method studies about undergraduate nursing students' attitudes toward research. Conclusions: Nursing students have generally positive attitudes toward research and see the value of research to professional nursing practice. Engaging in a research course or other active research-related activity improves attitudes toward nursing research. More rigorous study is warranted to determine best teaching/leaming strategies to enhance students' perceptions of research. Future research is also needed to gain a better understanding of the demographic, academic, and program factors that affect nursing students' attitudes toward nursing research.