| Negative attitudes and behaviors in academia, specialty education programs, and nursing have been attributed to the phenomenon identified as academic entitlement. Understanding regarding the relationship academic entitlement has to education and specialty education courses, such as nursing, is needed. The effects of academic entitlement, in terms of whether identifying and measuring academic entitlement can predict course grades in a first nursing course, is also needed. The purpose of this predictive correlational quantitative study was to examine whether a relationship was present between a measure of academic entitlement and a measure of student learning, the course grade. If a relationship was present, further examination sought to determine if a measure of academic entitlement could predict a measure of student learning, or final course grade in the nursing course. Tinto's Interactionalist theory provided the theoretical framework for this study. Other attributes, such as narcissism, entitlement, motivation, locus of control, self-regulation, gender, generational considerations, and consumerism, have informed academic entitlement research, and were also included as conceptual influences for this study. One hundred seventy-nine nursing students completed the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire and participant responses were correlated with final course grades in a first nursing course in an Associate of Science nursing program in a Midwestern state, multi-site program. Results demonstrated initial correlations between the participant questionnaire responses and the final course grade. Additional regression analysis revealed no significant predictive ability of participant questionnaire responses to predict final course grade when the survey responses were evaluated as one complete set of questions. While there was not a significant relationship or ability to predict outcomes, an implication could be that identifying and measuring academic entitlement can increase nurse educator awareness regarding potential effects in the course room. Recommendations for future research include study replication with other schools of nursing to increase diversity and representativeness of the sample population in terms of ethnicities and gender, as well as with a variety of nursing programs at various levels of educational preparation. The last recommendation is to utilize the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire to evaluate other outcomes or measures of student learning in addition to student course grades. |
