Effective Factors in Critical Thinking Disposition in Nursing Students

Introduction. Given the vital role of critical thinking and possibility of developing this meta-cognitive skill through training programs, the present study was conducted to determine the tendency and effective factors in critical thinking in nursing students. Materials and Methods. The present study is a cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2020 in a school of nursing in northern Iran. Participants in the study were all second to eighth semester nursing students studying in the faculty who entered the study by the census method. Inclusion criteria included employment in the field of nursing in the second semester and above, and exclusion criteria were employment and incomplete completion of the questionnaire questions. The required information was prepared in two parts: the first part of recording demographic information including age, gender, marital status, semester, average score, previous semester average score, and level of interest in the major and the second part was the adopted Ricketts’ critical thinking disposition questionnaire. SPSS 26 software and descriptive and analytical statistics were used to analyze the data. Results. The total average score of critical thinking disposition obtained as 120.20 ± 14.05 35 was found to positively and significantly relate to age (r = 0.150, p = 0.04 , d = 0.30), academic 36 semester ( p = 0.001 , d = 0.25), and interest in the major ( p = 0.003 , d = 0.38). Dimensions of 37 innovation and maturity were also significantly associated with academic semester and 38 interested in the major. Also, the total score of critical thinking and its dimensions in married people was higher than single, but this difference was not statistically significant. The results of analysis of variance showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the mean score of tendency to critical thinking and different semesters. Conclusion. Identifying the effective factors in critical thinking disposition can assist teachers in developing lesson plans and academic counseling, and at the macro level, can help with educational planning and revision of curricula.