The development of objective techniques to measure nursing knowledge, 1941-1952

An indirect by-product of A Curriculum Guide for Schools of Nursing, released by the National League of Nursing Education (NLNE) in 1937, was the attention it focused on evaluating the nursing student objectively (1). The first such guide had been issued 20 years earlier and revised in 1927, with only a slight modification. During the NLNE annual convention one year after publication of the final revision, a Joint Committee on Nursing Test was appointed to consider the possibility of developing objective techniques to measure nursing on a cooperative basis. Representatives from the League, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Nursing, and the Department of Nursing Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, were charged with taking steps to initiate such a project and seeking funds to support it (1). At the time, Isabel M. Stewart, who initiated the effort, was the director of the Teachers College Department of Nursing Education as well as an active participant in several educational NLNE endeavors.