The purpose of this study was to develop a scale of free nursing home adjustment for the elderly in Korea.

The developmental processes were construction of a conceptual framework, development of preliminary items, verification of content validity, twice data gathering, verification of construct validity, and reliability of final items. The first 53 preliminary items were obtained through review of literatures about nursing home adjustment and in depth interviews with 5 staffs of nursing home. These items were reviewed by five specialists for content validity and 39 items were chosen. The first data was collected from 107 elderly residing in 3 nursing homes and the second survey was from 147 residents who were living in five nursing homes. Finally this data was analyzed for construct validity and reliability.

There were 23 final items which were sorted into 5 factors. The factors were identified as ‘Relocation distress symptom’(8items), ‘Making friends’(4items), ‘Acceptance of new residence’ (6items), ‘Difficulty in group life’(3items), and ‘Having self-worth’(2items). The cumulative percent of variance was 53.466%. The reliability of the scale, Cronbach's alpha was .837.

The result of this study could be used for measuring nursing home adjustment of the elderly. However, for further validity and reliability, repeated researches are needed.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of preoperative pain control education on the pain control barrier, postoperative pain and pain control satisfaction in gynecological patients.

The study was a quasi-experimental research design. There were 58 subjects who were admitted for gynecological surgery to D University Hospital in B city. Pain control education was provided individually to the experimental group one day before their operation day for 20 minutes with the ‘ Pain Control Guide Book’ in the patient's admission room. The education book was made by researchers based on pain management references and patient interviews. For assessing the pain control barrier, a simplified version of Barriers Questionnaire was used, postoperative pain was assessed on a numeric scale(0-10) and satisfaction of pain control was assessed by one question.

The pain control barrier(F=15.828, p<.001) and the post pain score of the experimental group was lower than that of the control group. In addition, pain control satisfaction of the experimental group(t=3.612, p<.001) was higher than the control group's.

With the above results, preoperative pain control education could be an effective nursing intervention for pain control of surgical patients.

The purpose of this study was to develop a critical thinking disposition scale for nursing students.

The developmental process was construction of a conceptual framework, development of preliminary items, verification of content validity, development of secondary items, verification of construct validity and extraction of final items. The conceptual framework and first preliminary 60 items were obtained through a review of relevant literature and the development of critical disposition scales by 10 researchers who had been studying critical thinking for one year. These items were reviewed by five specialists for content validity and finally 55 items were chosen. The data was collected from October 1 to 15, 2004 and was analyzed using factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha with the SPSS program. The subjects were composed of 560 Bachelor of Science nursing students from 8 nursing schools.

There were 35 final items which were sorted into 8 factors. The factors were identified as ‘ intellectual integrity(6 items)’, ‘ creativity(4 items)’, ‘ challenge(6 items)’, ‘ open-mindedness(3 items)’, ‘ prudence(4 items)’, ‘ objectivity(4 items)’, ‘ truth seeking(3 items)’ and ‘ inquisitiveness(5 items)’. The cumulative percent of variance was 55.107%. The reliability of the scale, Cronbach's alpha was .892 and the factors' ranged from .562-.836.

The result of this study could be used for measuring critical thinking dispositions of nursing students. However, for further validity and reliability, repeated research is necessary.