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The stability of the factor structure of the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory was re-examined using a convenience sample of 800 undergraduate students from nursing (n = 520 first bachelors' and n = 185 second bachelors' students) and biology (n = 95) enrolled in introductory courses in their majors at a 4-yr. mid-Atlantic public university. Ages ranged from 17 to 54 years (M = 23.0, SD = 5.9), with 92 men and 707 women (1 missing). 685 participants identified themselves as Euro-American, 65 as African American, 9 as Hispanic, 26 as Asian, and 11 as 'Other' (4 missing). The inventory developed by Facione in 1994 is a 75-item, forced-choice, adjective checklist, yielding seven subscores and a total score assessing testees' disposition toward critical thinking. A principal components factor analysis did not replicate the original factor structure of seven factors but supported the stability of a four-factor structure which had emerged in previous work by Walsh and Hardy and by Kakai. When the 75 original items were reduced to 25, the explained variance for the inventory improved from 27% to 44.95%. Thus, further investigation and continued refinement is warranted.

Sports medicine, as a discipline, can be traced back to primitive man. The use of exercise as a prerequisite for conditioning and proper treatment of injuries was first documented in early Greek civilization with the establishment of the Olympics. Today, sports by their very nature invite injury. In 2000, 2.5 million students participated in varsity sports with 750,000 injuries recorded. These numbers do not account for sports activities outside school or leisure activities. Another area of potential injury is physical education class. These classes are large with limited supervision and encompass students of varying age and abilities. Nurses do not have an extensive knowledge of injury prevention or assessment in their basic nursing education. School nurses, as a subspecialty within nursing, are expected to keep up with the requirements of the adolescent and pediatric populations as well basic nursing skills. Due to work schedules and limited resources for continuing education, school nurses are not afforded much time or benefits to attend classes that would teach them skills needed to assess athletic-type injuries. School nurses need printed resources specific to their setting to help fill this void. Recognizing this need, Sports Medicine Techniques for the School-Based Nurse is a manual in process that will help fill this void. Being developed specifically for school nurses, the manual will provide information on prevention, evaluation, and management of athletic-type injuries commonly seen in the school nurse's office., Primitive man was concerned solely with survival. To exist in his world demanded the utmost in survival skills, for which he needed a body trained to make effective use of [...]