Attitudes toward social issues in health care: a cohort analysis

Attitudinal change toward psychosocial issues in health care was tested through a cohort analysis of 190 nursing students at four successive undergraduate levels. The topics examined were: consistency and variability of attitudes toward social issues in health care and relationship between scale performance and age. Attitudinal change among nursing students at four successive undergraduate levels was tested in the present study using a modification of the Attitudes Towards Social Issues in Medicine (ATSIM) Inventory, an instrument composed of seven subscales dealing with various aspects of health care. Techniques used included analysis of variance and Levene's test of the equality of variances. The findings confirmed a process of professional socialization in nursing education with respect to the attitudes of nursing students toward health care issues.