Teaching undergraduate nursing research: a narrative review of evaluation studies and a typology for further research

Before knowledge about strategies for teaching undergraduate nursing research can be synthesized, it must be demonstrated that studies evaluating teaching outcomes are valid. A narrative review using Cook and Campbell's validity framework for experimental and quasi-experimental studies was done to appraise the validity of the eight studies in which teaching strategies for undergraduate research have been evaluated. Although the studies sampled had evidence of uncontrolled threats to validity, the research reports emphasized the teaching strategy's "contextual validity" rather than the study's internal or external validity. This insight stimulated questions about the appropriateness of a traditional perspective on validity for research designed to evaluate teaching strategies. Accordingly, a "typology for research on strategies for teaching research," loosely based on Beer and Bloomer's schema for evaluation research, was proposed. The typology consists of four categories of evaluation studies that vary according to purpose, methodological assumptions, types of validity emphasized, and student sample size. The four categories, which are minimally represented in the current literature, are complementary approaches for further evaluation studies of teaching strategies in undergraduate nursing research.