Page 326 - Encyclopedia of Nursing Research

META-ANALySIS n 293

Thomas & Burk, 2009). The presence of dis- contributes to excellence and leadership in
ruptive behaviors in the clinical workplace, the profession. Research recommendations
including intimidation, lateral violence, and include study of peer mentoring outcomes, M
workplace incivility, has been widely docu- identification of different forms of mentor-
mented. These behaviors have been linked to ing to meet specific learning needs, outcome
various factors such as medical and nursing measures related to research and scholarly
errors, communication problems, high cost of productivity through mentoring, qualitative
care, and job dissatisfaction. The American and phenomenological methods of mentor-
Nurses Association (2004) has adopted a ing dyads, and mentoring outcomes for the
Leadership Standard, which states that nurses novice nurse.
should teach others to succeed by mentoring
and other strategies. Connie Vance
Numerous professional nursing associa-
tions have assumed leadership in promoting
mentor connections among their members
for networking, information, education, Meta-analysis
and leadership training. Special interest
and general professional and clinical spe-
cialty associations are providing both infor- Meta-analysis is a quantitative approach that
mal and formal mentoring opportunities for permits the synthesis and integration of results
their members. They are reporting anecdotal from multiple individual studies focused on a
reports of mentoring and networking ben- specific research question. A meta-analysis is
efits in their publications and Web sites. a rigorous alternative to the traditional nar-
Mentoring is a vital component of nurs- rative review of the literature. It involves the
ing scholarship and research activities application of the research process to a col-
(Byrne, Kangas, & Warren, 1996; Fawcett lection of studies in a specific area. The indi-
& McCorkle, 1998; Olson & Connelly, 1995; vidual studies are considered the sample. The
Rempusheski, 1992). One study reported findings from each study are transformed into
that the most productive (i.e., eight or more a common statistic called an effect size. An
research articles in a 3-year period) faculty effect size is a measure of the magnitude of the
members were more likely to have coau- experimental effect on outcome variables.
thored papers with mentors while in grad- Once the results from each study have
uate school (Megel, Langston, & Cresswell, been converted to a common metric, these
1988). Mentoring for scholarship and research findings can be pooled together and synthe-
is occurring through university research sized. The most common effect size indica-
programs, regional nursing research associ- tor is r, which is the Pearson product moment
ations, private foundations, and the National correlation. Another effect size indicator
Institute of Nursing Research. is the d index. Cohen’s d is the difference
In conclusion, an explosion of research between the means of the experimental and
studies and anecdotal reports in nursing control groups divided by the standard devi-
over the past 20 years is providing impor- ation. Cohen (1988) has provided guidelines
tant knowledge about the positive mentor- for interpreting the magnitude of both the r
ing outcomes for the nursing profession. and d effect size indicators. For the r index,
Through ongoing investigation, mentoring Cohen has defined small, medium, and large
has been identified as an essential human effect sizes as .10, .30, and .50 or more, respec-
and professional developmental relationship tively. For the d indicator, an effect size of .2
that empowers and develops students, nov- is considered small, .5 is medium, and .8 or
ice and experienced nurses, and leaders and more is large.