Influence of reading and mathematics screening tests and student ages on academic achievement in a two year Canadian college nursing program

Presently the Douglas College General Nursing Program screens its applicants with the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the Stanford Diagnostic Math Test in the belief that those tests set appropiate standards for admission to the program. No research had been performed to validate this belief. This descriptive, exploratory study examined the available data to determine the influence of the screening tests on academic achievement. Since the literature documents the influence of demographic variables on academic achievement in nursing programs, the students' ages were also included in this study. The students' scores on the screening tests, and the students' ages, were correlated with their scores on six nursing academic scores in the first two semesters in the program. Canonical correlation analysis was performed on the same data to see if insight could be obtained about the interrelationships of the screening tests, the students ages, and academic achievement. The Pearson r correlations indicate that the influence of the screening tests was small to moderate on academic achievement in the individual courses, and that students' ages demonstrated the weakest correlation. Sub-test 3 of the Stanford Diagnostic Math test consistently correlated the highest with the academic course scores with only two exceptions, and in those cases it was the second highest correlate. The canonical correlation analysis demonstrates that there are two underlying linkages or dimensions between the two data sets. The first dimension demonstrates the dominance of the Stanford Diagnostic Math sub-tests in correlating with academic achievement. The second dimension is too weak to make assumptions about the relationship between the two data sets, but it does suggest that the students' ages influence academic achievement.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat