Nursing students' opinions about acupuncture and Chinese medicine

Eighty senior nursing students at the University of San Francisco (USF) were divided at random into four groups of 20. Two groups were pretested on their knowledge of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. One week later a 50-minute class in acupuncture and Chinese medicine was given in a community health class to one of the two pretexted groups and one of the two untested groups. Following the class, the test was given to all four groups. Using the Solomon Four-Group design to measure effects of pretesting and the class content, significant differences were found between the groups on questions seeking differences, to confirm the first hypothesis that an increase in knowledge about acupuncture and Chinese medicine will accompany an increase in its acceptance as a healing tool and the desire to learn more about it. A t-test on the results of pre- and post- tests confirmed the second hypothesis that there will be no difference between groups in history or maturation from one week to the next.