DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A STRUCTURED CLINICAL ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR ASSESSING STUDENT NURSES’ CLINICAL COMPETENCE

AUTHOR: NWONU, EUNICE IFEYINWA 

DEPARTMENT: EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT AND POLICY

AFFILIATION: NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY, AWKA

Assessment of clinical performance contributes to academic qualifications that incorporate professional awards. The administrators of Nursing Schools are facing the problem of subjectivity in practical examination of student nurses. This is evident in examination situations in which the examiner assigns any task of choice to the student and scores the student based on his/her perception of the student’s competence in performing the task. By this, some students are exposed to more difficult tasks than others and subjective scoring, all depending on the inclination of the examiner. In response to this problem, the study developed and validated a Structured Clinical Assessment Tool (SCAT) that will make it possible for all the students to be examined on the same tasks for any examination episode and judged on the same premise. Instrumentation research design was used. One hundred and thirty seven student nurses from three Schools of Nursing in the South East Zone of Nigeria formed the sample for the study. Prior to developing the tool, a competency assessment framework was developed based on the nursing process model with the five steps of the process being the core competencies and sub skills identified for each of the core competencies. The appropriateness of the sub-skills was verified using 52 nurse educators. The care sub-skills were pooled to form the model for SCAT. The model consists of twelve activity stations which are examination points where students perform specified nursing tasks and are scored using a predetermined standard. Initially 48 items (four per station) and their scoring guide were generated and four experienced nurse educator/managers were used to verify their appropriateness. Thirty six items survived the validation exercise using average congruency percentage. Data collected were analysed using alpha coefficient, t-test and analysis of variance. The results of the analysis confirmed the validity of the 36 items and showed that the items were able to discriminate between the high and low achievers. The high reliability index (0.84-0.99) for most of the procedure station items and moderate reliability index (0.69-0.78) for others confirm that the instrument has a good inter-scorer consistency and therefore is reliable. Based on these findings, the SCAT is a tool that has the potentials for reducing the subjectivity that is inherent in clinical assessments that are based on observation and is therefore recommended for assessing clinical competence of student nurses.

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ASSESSMENT OF ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS POSSESSED BY SMALL SCALE BUSINESS OPERATORS IN DELTA STATE

AUTHOR: ONNOH-ONAJITE, GODWIN

DEPARTMENT: VOCATIONAL EDUCATION,

AFFILIATION: NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY, AWKA.

This study assessed the opinions of small scale business operators in Delta state on the entrepreneurial skills they possessed. The problem of the study is that small scale businesses in Delta State are either not doing well or have failed. The design of the research is based on survey method and the area of study is Delta State. The population consists of all the 984 small scale business operators in Delta state who were registered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industries as at December 2010. A sample of 625 registered small scale business operators from the 25 LGAs in the state were used for the study. Four research questions guided the conduct of the study and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. The validity of the instrument was established by experts in business education while the cronbach alfa reliability method was used and a reliability coefficient of 0.94 was obtained. Data collected were analyzed using mean ratings, z-test and one way analysis of variance (ANOVA). From the results of the analysis of the data, it was discovered that ethics and moral skills, self motivation skills, time management skills and inter
personal relation skills were rated as high extent. Small scale business operators did not differ significantly in their mean ratings of the extent they possessed ethics and moral skills, self motivation skills, time management skills and interpersonal relation skills as a result of their sex, location and educational qualifications. However, they differed significantly in their mean rating of the extent they possessed interpersonal relation skills as a result of their years of operation. Based on the results, it was recommended that curriculum planners should incorporate the identified entrepreneurship skills in the curriculum of entrepreneurship programmes both at the secondary and tertiary levels of Business Education so that prospective entrepreneurs could effectively manage their enterprises. It was also recommended that irrespective of the course of study at any tertiary institution, entrepreneurship training should be integrated so that the level of business failure could be minimized. Furthermore, it was recommended that workshops and seminars should be organized for operators of small scale business owners by the agencies responsible for the development of small scale businesses at all levels of
government to create in-depth knowledge and technical know-how on the identified entrepreneurship skills.

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STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT BEHAVIOUR OF NIGERIAN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS A CASE STUDY OF STRATEGIC PLANNING BEHAVIOR OF NIGERIAN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS (JOHN HOLT NIGERIA PLC)

AUTHOR: OKOLI VERONICA NONYE

DEPARTMENT: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

AFFILIATION: NNAMDI AZIKIWE UNIVERSITY AWKA

This research study is an attempt to investigate management behavior of Nigerian business organization. The objective of this study is to find out whether Nigerian business organizations formulate strategies in response to changes in business environment. Methodically, this study is descriptive, data were collected through survey method. Hypotheses were collected to guide the major activity of this study. The major findings of this study are:
1. Business organizations have diverse products and sometimes these influence their management behavior;
2. Strategic planning/ management has helped to improve performance of business organizations;
3. Business organizations rely on top management for initiating and organizing management activities especially when there is need for changes in strategy due to environment and technology.

Based on the above findings, the major conclusion of this study is that business organizations manifest strategic management behavior since they respond to changes in environment through strategic planning responses. Based on the above major conclusion of this study, the following recommendations are been made for improvement:

1. Business organizations should develop deliberate innovative management programmes;
2. Management of organizations must seek conceptual skill towards the understanding of current technology;
3. Business should bring their services closer to the target market to enhance improved profitability.

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