A COMPARISON OF PERCEPTIONS OF AGGRESSION AND VIOLENCE BY PSYCHIATRIC-NURSES

The current study was designed to obtain an initial understanding of t he questions, ''How consistent are the perceptions of psychiatric nurs es regarding the seriousness of violent behavior'' and ''Are their per ceptions consistent with those of nurses who do not have extensive psy chiatric experience?''. An exploratory study was conducted using items to measure Violence to Self, Others (Verbal and Physical) and Propert y. The items were formatted using Thurstone's method of paired compari sons and judgments regarding the seriousness of each type of violent b ehavior for the categories of doing grievous harm to self, others or p roperty. Final weights were obtained using procedures outlined by Thur stone (1959) (The Measurement of Values. University of Chicago Press, Chicago). The sample included doctoral students in nursing (n = 35) an d psychiatric nurses (n = 34) currently working in the inpatient psych iatric setting. The most noteworthy finding was the extent of disagree ment within the psychiatric nurse group regarding the seriousness of t he behaviors.