Abstract:
Background: South African nursing students should be taught to conduct research as an investigation process to enable them to practice how nursing knowledge is generated. Students may be requested to conduct research projects as individuals or as a group, depending on institutional preferences.
Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of student nurses in conducting research at Limpopo College of Nursing.
Methodology: A qualitative approach complemented by explorative, descriptive and contextual research designs were used. A non-probability purposive sampling method was used to sample the nursing colleges and participants. A pre-test was conducted. A semi-structured interview guide was used. The interview lasted about 30-45 minutes per participant. A total of 18 participants were interviewed. All participants signed informed consent before data collection. Tesch’s open-coding method was used for data analysis. Ethical considerations were adhered to and ethics clearance was obtained from the University of Venda Human and Clinical Trials Research Ethics Committee (HCTREC).
Results: The findings revealed that student research groups are too large and not everyone participated. Most students lacked background knowledge of research while others had insufficient knowledge on it. However, the research module introduced in level two in the Social Science module demanded more efforts and made it difficult for students to comprehend the research process. There was a general lack of expertise in supervising group research exacerbated by superfluous facilitators from different schools of thoughts and poor supervisory roles. Insufficient time was allocated for the research module and a lack of resources to support group researchers impacted negatively on the desired outcomes.
Recommendations: Students should receive training on group learning such as how to set goals, share ideas, divide tasks, use peer- and self-assessment, adopt strategies for conflict resolution, communicate face-to-face and via current technologies. The training should always be scheduled where all students who registered for the research module should attend the classes and should be regarded as a requirement for the research module.
