Nursing students' competence and perceived mentor assessment literacy: the mediating role of self-efficacy and gender bias.

Background: Mentors play a crucial role in clinical nursing education, particularly in assessing student nurses. However, if students cannot perceive their mentors' assessment-literate practices (referred to as mentors' assessment-literate practices hereafter), students may not effectively utilize assessment information for learning. Despite its significance, mentors' assessment-literate practices and the antecedent factors are not well studied. This study aims to explore the mediating role of nursing students' self-efficacy in the relationship between their competence and their perception of mentors' assessment-literate practices, while also examining potential gender bias in mentors' assessment-literate practices.

Methods: The study employed a cross-sectional quantitative design. Participants included 854 final-year nursing students (61 males, 793 females) from 10 colleges/universities in southern China. After eight months of clinical training, students reported on mentors' assessment-literate practices, self-efficacy, internship grades, and gender. Path analysis was conducted using Mplus 8.10 to test the mediating model, and gender bias was assessed through differential item functioning analysis with Winsteps^® (Version 5.6.0.0).

Results: The study found a full mediation effect of self-efficacy between competence and students' perception of their mentors' assessment-literate practices, with a statistically significant indirect association of 0.10. The path coefficient between competence and self-efficacy is 0.12, and between self-efficacy and perceived mentors' assessment-literate practices is 0.86. Gender bias and gender difference were statistically not supported; however, three items showed large effect size regarding gender bias.

Conclusions: This study introduces assessment-literate practices as a key concept in nursing education, highlighting its antecedent factors and potential gender biases for better assessment practices. The findings suggest that self-efficacy plays a full mediating role; hence, stakeholders should prioritize developing students' self-efficacy while improving their competence. Also, mentorship practices should be adjusted to ensure equal opportunities for both male and female students; specifically, they may need to be aware of potential gender bias, offering male students more practice opportunities and female students more chances to explain.