The relationship of a course grade to hope and optimism in nursing students' academic success

In several disciplines in education and in health care, hope and optimism have been researched and identified as being correlated with positive outcomes such as physiological and emotional well-being. The purpose of the study was to determine if there was a relationship between hope and/or optimism and nursing student’s academic success.. A convenience sample of 124 second semester nursing students was identified; the final number of participants 58. Participants completed the Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (AHS) survey, a 12 item self-reported questionnaire that uses a Likert-type scale designed to identify levels of hope. Participants also completed the Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R), a 10 item self-reported questionnaire that uses a Likert-type scale to identify levels of optimism and pessimism. Survey results were analyzed in relationship to the final numeric grade in the first semester Human Pathophysiology course which were self-reported by selecting from six grade ranges. The results of the statistical analysis (backward multiple regression analysis and Pearson Correlational Coefficient) found no significant relationships between hope, agency, or pathways. However, optimism, when combined with pessimism, was found to have a statistically significant relationship to the participants score in Human Pathophysiology (r2 =..105). (Published By University of Alabama Libraries