Attachment styles of nursing students: a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study.
OBJECTIVE
This research included two consecutive studies, the first of which aimed to examine university nursing students' attachment styles and to study a set of variables that affect their attachment styles, while the second study aimed to identify the effect of nursing education on nursing students' attachment styles.


METHODS
This research was conducted as a cross-sectional survey with nursing students from a school of nursing in Turkey. The research also included a longitudinal follow-up of first year students, to evaluate the effect of nursing education on attachment styles. Data were collected by using a "Personal Information Form" and "Relationship Scales Questionnaire".


RESULTS
Nursing students' personal characteristics of age, longest place of residence, and economic status; family characteristics of number of siblings and families' longest place of residence; and romantic characteristics of any current romantic relationships and the number of past romantic relationships were found to be the factors that were influential in attachment styles. In addition, the nursing students had a statistically significant decrease in their insecure attachment style mean scores at the end of nursing education.


CONCLUSIONS
Assessing attachment styles may be a potentially useful way to understand and counsel nursing students.
Kaya
Nurten
N
Istanbul University, Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, Department of Fundamentals of Nursing, Abide-i Hürriyet Cad, 34381 Istanbul, Turkey. nurka@istanbul.edu.tr
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000458:organization & administration; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D009769:Object Attachment; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012111:Residence Characteristics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014421:Turkey; D055815:Young Adult