A snapshot of Australian nursing scholarship 1993–1994

feature Article

A snapshot of Australian nursing scholarship 1993-1994 Kathryn L. Roberts ABSTRACT:- Tliis study investigates Australian nursing academics' publications in nursing and health journals in 1993-94. It describes the personal and professional characteristics of the authors, characteristics of the articles and interactions among these characteristics. Frequency descriptions were done to describe data and cross-tabulations were used to investigate relationships. The major findings about the authors are that few nurse-academics are publishing, that those who do publish are mainly senior academics, and that there are differences in publication rates among the states. The major findings about articles were that the majority of articles were in domestic journals, the major type of scholarship is research scholarship and that there is a shift azvay from teaching scholarship articles. The major focus of research scholarship is medical-surgical-nursing, with a quantitative approach, correlational design, convenience sample and no theoretical framework. Recommendations are made for further research ivhich does not restrict scholarship to that appearing in journals and which investigates factors that constrain and facilitate scholarship.

INTRODUCTION

characteristics of scholars, in order to establish baseline data against which future generations of scholars can be

The transfer of nursing pre-registration programs into

compared. By understanding the history of our scholar-

the tertiary education sector in the mid-1980s resulted in

ship we can shape its future.

an increasing emphasis on nursing scholarship.

This

study analyses 1 year of journal articles - mid-1993 to

Tlie study includes descriptions of the characteristics of

mid-1994 - published by nurse-academics employed in

the articles, the personal and professional characteristics

Australian universities. T.ike a snapshot, it captures a

of the authors and an exploration of the relationships

significant

between the characteristics of authors and articles.

moment

in their history: a period of

It

expanding publishing opportunities.

analyses publications in nursing or health journals listed

in the mid-J 98Ds, the Australian journal of Advanced Nursing

journal of Mental Health Nursing (ANZJMHN).

on CINAHI., as well as the Australian and Neiv Zealand (AJAN) was the only Australian scholarly nursing journal, although Australian nurses also published in overseas

Conceptual framework

nursing journals and in the journals of other disciplines.

Kathryn L Roberts RN BNSc MA PhD FRCNAFCN (NSW) is Professor of Nursing, School of Health Science, Faculty of Science, Northern Territory University, Darwin Northern Territory.

Although the AJAN remains a major force in Australian

The professional literature usually fails to define 'scholar'

nursing scholarship, it has now lost its exclusive

and 'scholarship', perhaps assuming that the reader

dominance.

already knows what they are.

By 1993, other mainstream and specialist

The author defines a

journals such as the Contemporary Nurse, the Australian

scholar as 'a person who develops or

journal of Mental Health Nursing and the Australian Journal

knowledge based on theory, research, and practice', and

of Rural Health had arrived on the scene. While a previous

scholarship, as 'creative intellectual activity that involves

study on Australian nursing scholarship investigated

generation, evaluation, synthesis and integration of

publication in the AJAN (McConnell and Paech 1993), it

knowledge based on theory, research, and practice'

was now possible to examine a broader picture of

(Roberts 1995). Scholarship makes a vital contribution to

Australian nursing scholarship by including publications

the development of nursing's unique body of knowledge.

in more Australian and overseas journals.

By far the most straightforward measure of a profession's

The new

technology of CD-Rom databases made it feasible to

integrates

scholarship is its publications in refereed journals.

conduct such a study. Boyer (1990) researched priorities of the professoriate in It is important in the early phase of our scholarly

the United States of America. He found four types of

development

professorial

COLLEGIAN VOLUME 3 (1) JANUARY 1996

to

document

the

scholarship

and

scholarship:

discovery,

integration,

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application and teaching.

He concluded that the

scholarship of discovery develops human knowledge, mainly by means of research.

were cross-tabulated with the characteristics of the articles to discover any meaningful interactions.

The scholarship of

integration interprets, draws together and brings new

The present study identified authors from the population

insight to bear on original research, and interprets

of nurse-academics rather than working from the articles,

research or fits it into larger intellectual patterns. The

as did McConnell and Paech.

scholarship

advantages of including all nurse-academics who were

of

application

applies knowledge

to

This method had the

consequential problems, and the scholarship of teaching

publishing

concerns imparting knowledge to students (Boyer 1990).

comparison of their characteristics with those who were not.

in nursing journals and allowing

The search was restricted to full-time nurse-

These types of scholarship exist in nursing. Theoretical

academics working in nursing faculties.

scholarship, or scholarship of integration, deals with the

documents were

conceptual aspects of nursing knowledge, advancing

nee ess a ry.

knowledge by integrating existing knowledge.

the

Since public

used, ethics clearance was

not

It also

integrates knowledge from various other disciplines into

hirst, the author identified all nurse-academics by means

nursing.

of

Research (discovery) scholarship reports

university

calendars

and

the

Commonwealth

The scholarship of

Universities Yearbook (Universities 1994). Then, a search

application, clinical scholarship, describes nursing

was carried out of C1NA11L on CD-ROM and the

practice. Teaching scholarship concerns the imparting of

ANZJMHN for articles that were published during the

nursing knowledge to students.

selected period by the nurse-academics. This was done

significant nursing research.

by means of entering the name of each staff member into Previous findings

the author-searching function of C1NAI Ik on CD-ROM. Searching was limited to C1NAIIL because it indexes

The only study published on Australian nursing scholars and scholarship was in the AJAN (McConnell and Paech 1993).

It covered the first 8 years, was descriptive,

focused primarily on authors and concentrated on trends over time. It showed that most authors arc nurses, of whom most are nurse-academics or nurse-educators and fewer are clinicians (McConnell and Paech 1993). Most authors came from Victoria, followed by New South Wales and South Australia, and there was an increase of authors from Western Australia over time, but otherwise there was very little change across the decade for authors (McConnell and Paech 1993).

almost all scholarly nursing journals.

Only articles

published in the period from July 1993 to June 1994 inclusive were selected. If quarterly journals published an issue in June, the June 1993 but not the June 1994 issues were selected since thev had the greatest part of their period within the study. All types of articles from all journals were included. In searching, care was taken with the spelling of names, and various combinations of initials were entered, as entries on the same authors arc indexed in different ways. There was a possibility of inaccurate attribution of an article by an author who was not one of the identified

The focus of articles in the AJAN was fairly evenly distributed among professional nursing issues, education and clinical practice, with a few on research and administration (McConnell and Paech 1993).

Most

articles were single-authored but there was a trend towards multiple authorship over time. There was a rise in the mean number of registered nurse authors per article over 8 years (McConnell and Paech 1993).

nurse-academics but who had the same surname and initials.

This was avoided by consulting the author

affiliation in CINAHI., the article itself, or the editor of the journal. Copies of all relevant articles (n=75) were obtained for further analysis. Data were entered into the database, which also contained data about gender, qualifications, level of appointment and state or territory in which employed.

No published study that explored interactions between authors and articles was found.

Those nurse-

academics whose names appeared on the author lists of the identified articles were classified as published authors for the purposes of this study, and the remainder as

METHOD

unpublished. The position on the list - ie principal author, The present study used a descriptive and correlational

second or later author - was also entered, as were a

design. A descriptive process was used to portray both

number of articles published during the relevant period

authors and articles. Some characteristics of the authors

and journal in which published.

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COLLEGIAN VOLUME 3 <1) JANUARY 1996 i

A potential problem in analysing the interaction between

RESULTS

authors and articles was that some authors were authors on more than one article. This overlap was eliminated by excluding an author's non-refereed articles, using the second author where the principal author had already been credited with a publication, and eliminating all but the author's most recent article. Since authors lend to publish the same type of articles, this decreased the number of entries per author without interfering with the distribution. This left 55 entries. Because of the small number of articles remaining, categories were collapsed where possible; for example, level of appointment was collapsed into junior nurse-academics (Level A and B) and senior nurse-academics (Level C, D and L).

Publication patterns Nurse-academics as a group had a fairly low rate of publication: only S3 (7 per cent) had a publication in a nursing journal in the period studied. About one quarter of published authors are male (26 per cent), although males only account for 17 per cent of nurse-academics as shown on the database.

The state of employment

affected the proportion of faculties published.

Of the

states, NSW led the authorship with 9 per cent published. Queensland had 6 per cent, South Australia 5 per cent, Victoria and WA 3 per cent each and Tasmania had none. The rates for the territories - NT (10 per cent)

Data about the articles themselves were extracted by content analysis, a methodology that analyses patterns of content in documents.

Categories for

and ACL (8 per cent) - arc distorted because of their small populations.

classifying

information should reflect the purpose of the research, and be exhaustive, independent and mutually exclusive (Holsti 1969). The researcher mainly used categories for each variable that were exclusive and had been primarily based on categories developed by Moody et al {Moody,

Six per cent of nurse-academics

had a

publication, while 2 per cent had a

refereed

non-refereed

publication, with some overlap. The number of refereed publications per author ranged from one to four, and of non-refereed publications from one to five. There was no difference in numbers of publications for males and

Wilson e t a l 1988).

females, or for state of employment. The author read and categorised each article according to journal, number of authors, type of scholarship, nursing focus, research design and theoretical framework, and whether it was classified as refereed or not. Articles were also classified according to their focus: theoretical scholarship, research scholarship, clinicaI scholarship and leaching scholarship, as per Buyer (1990). Teaching scholarship was included as a separate category in this

The percentage published rose with the level of appointment.

Figure 1 shows the percentage in the

different award classifications who were published. There was also a relationship between qualifications and publications,

because

level

of

appointment

and

qualifications are strongly related to each other. Of those with postgraduate qualifications, 12 per cent were

study because the study was restricted to nurseacademics fur whom teaching scholarship would be relevant.

The breakdowns of the categories will be

shown in the results section. In analysing interactions between authors and articles, two characteristics of the authors - gender and level of appointment - were examined to see if they affected the characteristics of the articles. There were too few clinical scholarship articles, teaching scholarship articles or theoretical scholarship articles to permit any meaningful analysis of interactions between characteristics of authors and these articles. The interactive analysis was therefore confined to research scholarship articles. All data were analysed using the program StatVicw on an Apple Macintosh computer. Frequency distributions were used to generate descriptive data. Variables were crosstabulated to explore interactions. Inferential statistics were not reported since the whole population was used.

COLLEGIAN VOLUME 3 (I) JANUARY 1996

6

Figure 1. Percentage published by level of award.

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published,

while only 4 per cent of those

with

undergraduate qualifications were published.

1%1%

The authors Most authors (74 per cent) were female.

The highest

proportion came from New South Wales and the lowest from Tasmania.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of

authors by state. The authors' qualifications were fairly evenly distributed between a bachelor's degree or less (38 per cent), a graduate diploma or masters (34 per cent) and a PhD (28 per cent). Over half (53 per cent) were at lecturer level or below, while one fifth were at senior lecturer level and the remainder were at associate professor level (13 per cent) or professorial level (13 per cent). Three quarters (76 per cent) of the published authors had one publication, while a few (19 per cent) had two and the remainder had more than two. For all published authors

D

New South Wales

Victoria

F^J^jl South Australia

and both types of article, there was also a tendency for

Queensland

Western Australia

Northern Territory

higher-level academics to publish more, with one third of professors, 30 per cent of associate professors and one fifth

I

of both senior lecturers and lecturers publishing more than one article. Since employment level and qualifications are

I Australian Capital Territory

Figure 2. Distribution of authors by state.

strongly related to each other, the same pattern held true for qualifications, with 60 per cent of those publishing one or two papers having postgraduate qualifications, while all of those who published more than two papers had postgraduate qualifications. The articles There were 75 articles, published in numerous domestic and foreign journals,

'line majority of articles (61 per

cent) appeared in the mainstream Australian nursing journals:

Australian

journal

of Advanced

Nursing,

Contemporary Nurse and the specialist journal, Australian and New Zealand journal of Mental Health Nursing

(see

Figure 3.) Other clinical journals (eg journal of Clinical Nursing, Australian

journal

of Critical

Care) and

advanced

scholarship journals (eg journal of Advanced Nursing and Internationa! journal of Nursing Studies) accounted for the remainder.

•

AJAN

^m

Cont Nurse

a Other Clinical

^m

ANZJOMHN

H Advanced Schol

•

I Miscellaneous

Over two thirds of the articles (69 per cent) were published in domestic journals.

Foreign publications

were equally divided between journals emanating from England and North America.

A higher proportion of

foreign articles (87 per cent) than Australian articles (77 per cent) was referecd.

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Figure 3. Journals in which Australian nurse-academics publish.

COLLEGIAN VOLUME 3 (1) JANUARY 1996

Almost two thirds of all articles (60 per cent) were singleauthored. About one quarter (23 per cent) had two authors, and the rest had more than two.

Whereas theoretical

scholarship articles comprised 36 per cent of all articles, a greater proportion than expected was single-authored (46 per cent). On the other hand, while research articles comprised half of articles, a greater proportion than would have been expected was multiple-authored (66 per cent). Most (80 per cent) of the articles were refereed. Of these, half were research reports, over a third were theoretical scholarship articles and the remainder were clinical scholarship and teaching scholarship articles. Figure 4 shows the distribution of focus of the articles. The major focus of research articles was clinical practice research. Figure 5 shows the focus of the research articles. Of the 10 clinical research articles, medical-surgical accounted for three, general nursing, mental health and gerontology for two each, and maternal-infant for one.

•

Research

Theoretical

Clinical

Teaching

Most research articles used a quantitative approach (71 per cent), with the remainder using a qualitative approach and none using a mixed mode. Quantitative articles used primarily a co-relational (38 per cent) or

Figure 4. Focus of scholarship: refereed articles.

descriptive (31 per cent) design. The remainder used an experimental (19 per cent) or quasi-experimental (13 per cent) design. Almost all of them (94 per cent) used a convenience sample, with the remainder

using a

representative sample. Of the seven articles classified as qualitative, three used phenomenology

while

two

used

an

interpretive

approach and two action research. Most researched articles (71 per cent) did not use a theoretical framework.

Of those that did, three used a

nursing framework, two using Orem's Self-care Deficit Nursing theory and one using Levine's Conservation Principles.

One article used a behavioural science

framework and one an education framework. Theoretical scholarship articles comprised the second largest group.

These focused mainly on professional

issues and administration, with research, review and clinical practice next. Figure 6 shows the distribution of

•

Clin Practice

Administration

Students

Pract Role

theoretical scholarship articles. "H Pract Char

Of the eight clinical scholarship articles, mental health accounted for the greatest proportion with three, while general nursing accounted for two and midwifery and paediatrics one each.

C&LfcGlAN V0LUM.fi 3 Of JANUARY ! f »

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Educ Praxis

Research Method

Figure 5. Focus of research articles.

a

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Concerning research scholarship articles, articles about education praxis, administration, characteristics of the practitioner and research method were exclusively written by females.

Articles about the role of the

practitioner were more likely than expected to have been written by a male (67 per cent). There was no difference for research about clinical practice or students, or use of a theoretical framework. After the adjustment for duplicate authorship, almost half of the articles (45 per cent) were written by junior nurseacademics. There was no difference for level of appointment and type of scholarship, although no teaching scholarship article was written by the professorial group. As far as research articles were concerned, there was no difference for level of appointment and whether or not the article was a

•

report of clinical research. However, while 73 per cent of all Prof Issues

^ *

ArJministration Clin Practice

Review

research articles were written by senior nurse-academics, 86 per cent of research articles using a qualitative approach were written by senior nurse-academics.

Research

V

V

Philosophy

DISCUSSION Health System

Concept Frame

One of the major findings of this study was that relatively Figure 6. Focus of theoretical scholarship articles.

few nurse-academics are publishing and that most are publishing one paper per year, if the findings for the period studied arc typical. This rate of publication is reasonable,

Of the non-rcfcreed articles, there were four guest

given that nursing is new to academia.

editorials, two soapboxes, two notes, two conversations

academics appear to be studying to improve their own

with researchers and one each of exemplars, software

qualifications while developing new programs, reviewing

reviews and long letters (as opposed to letters to the

older programs and participating in university committee

editor).

work. Johnston suggests that the teaching loads of nurse-

Most nurse-

academics, the need to retain clinical competence and While foreign journals accounted for 35 per cent of

professional involvement, and the demands of clinical

articles overall, they accounted for a greater level of

teaching all compromise their research contribution, and -

research articles (44 per cent) and teaching scholarship

by implication - publication rates (Johnston 1994, cited in

articles (100 per cent) than would have been expected.

Reid 1994). This may well change as nursing education

While the Australian journals accounted for 64 per cent of

moves into a period of consolidation and nurse-academics

articles overall, they accounted for a greater proportion

achieve the qualifications they arc seeking.

of theoretical scholarship articles (78 per cent) and clinical scholarship articles (71 per cent) than would have been expected.

Nurse-academics are under-represented at the senior academic levels (Keid 1994). Although the current rate of

Relationship between authors and articles

publication is understandable, it is not enough to ensure promotions for most of this group.

In the author's

After the adjustment for duplicate authorship was made,

experience on a university promotions

committee,

27 per cent of articles had been written by males.

publications in refereed journals are an extremely

Although females accounted for 74 per cent of articles,

important factor in achieving promotion. One publication

articles about clinical scholarship were more likely than

per year is not considered enough for promotion to senior

expected to have been written by females (83 per cent)

levels of academia. Unless there is an improvement in the

and articles about teaching less likely (50 per cent). There

publication rate or a change in values in the higher

was no relationship of gender with either theoretical

education sector of the tertiary education system, an

scholarship or research articles.

increased rate of promotion will be unlikely.

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COLLEGIAN VOLUME 3 (1) JANUARY 1996

The finding that New South Wales has the highest

learned to place more value on publication in journals as

percentage of authors and Victoria a low percentage does

evidence of scholarship.

not agree with previous findings that Victoria had the highest percentage of authors in the AJAN (McConnell and Paech 1993). This finding suggests that there may have been some factor favouring the selection of Victorians publishing in the AJAN in its first decade. Without knowing submission and rejection rates for the different states, it would be unfair to conclude that there was any editorial bias. A subsequent analysis of the data for the present study showed that the AJAN had a

This study was limited by the short time-frame that it examined and by the information contained in the sources used for information. Like its predecessor, it only explored scholarship in journals. Further research that surveyed authors directly to determine wider patterns of scholarship and influence on them would be useful. However, the study has contributed a picture of nursescholars and their scholarship in journals on a global

majority of articles with first authors from New South

basis, using the complete group of scholars and their

Wales, so the AJAN was typical of the findings for all

publications.

journals combined and seems to have come into line with

academics.

Its results arc therefore valid for nurse-

other journals.

CONCLUSIONS The finding that the majority of Australian articles appear in domestic journals could reflect a preference for

The results of this study suggest that nursing scholarship

local exposure, the difficulty of accessing publication in

has undergone some recent changes, such as a shift away

overseas journals, or a disregard for the higher value of

from teaching scholarship. The participation of the states

publication in international journals generally accorded

has

by the tertiary system. The finding that there was an

demographics

equal number of articles published in British and

Otherwise, the previously-identified characteristics of

American journals suggests a preference for British

authors and articles appear to be relatively stable.

also

changed of

to the

reflect tertiary

more

closely

education

the

system.

journals since there are many more American than British journals.

This may occur either because Australian

REFERENCES

nursing derived from British nursing and Australian nurses are more directed towards the UK, or because the American journals are less receptive.

Again, without

submission and rejection rates it would be impossible to ascertain the reason.

Another major finding of this study is that there has been a shift away from publication of articles on education. In the first years of the AJAN, education was a major theme (McConnell and Paech 1993). In 1993-94, only 4 per cent of research articles and no theoretical scholarship articles were concerned with education practice, and there were only two teaching scholarship articles. Nursing is clearly starting to research and think about nursing rather than education.

This finding may also be related to the

establishment of clinical chairs, as several articles were

Association of Commonwealth Universities 1994

wealth universities yearbook. Association of Commonwealth Universities, London ISoyer EI. 1990

Scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the

professoriate.

Carnegie l'oundaiion for the Advancement of

Teaching, 1'rinceton, NJ Holsti O 1969

Content analysis for the social sciences and

humanities. Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park, California Johnston A 1994 Resource allocation issues in undergraduate nurse education, part A. University of Queensland, St l.ucia McConnell E and Paech M 1993

Trends in scholarly nursing

literature. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing ll(2):28-32 Moody IE, Wilson ME ci al 1988 Analysis of a decade of nursing practice research: 1977-1986. Nursing Research 37(6):374-79 Reid JC 1994 Report of the national review of nurse education m the higher education sector - 1994 and beyond.

written by authors holding clinical chairs.

Common-

Australian

Government Publishing Serviee, Canberra

This study found that a majority of articles was written by senior nurse-academics.

The rise in the number of

publications with level of appointment may be related to

Roberts K 1993

Research, theoretical and clinical scholarship,

connections and distinctions. In: Gray G, Pratt R (uds) Scholarship in the discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne

the higher-level academics having attained postgraduate qualifications, with consequently more experience in writing research reports and more time to concentrate on publication. At the same time, the senior academics may through participation in the promotion process - have

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