Lippincott PassPoint's effect on NCLEX-RN outcomes: ADN program with four-semester access

Lippincott PassPoint practice exam usage and mastery Levels

Students took practice exams within Lippincott PassPoint to simulate the longer format NCLEX-RN experience. Table 12 shows student usage and ML for Lippincott PassPoint practice exams. Students took an average of 8.1 practice exams, with an average of 689.3 practice exam questions and an overall exam ML of 5.4. (SD = 1.6).

Within Lippincott PassPoint correlations

A Pearson’s product moment correlation was run to explore the relationship between Lippincott PassPoint quizzing usage and ML. Three outlier students were removed from the analysis. Result indicated a statistically significant, strong positive correlation between the number of Lippincott PassPoint questions a student answered and overall ML, r (31) = .542, p < .001. Thus, we see as students answer more questions, their mastery of the course material increases accordingly (see Table 13).

HESI exit exam

Thirty-one students took the HESI E2. Four students experienced technical issues with the exam and so no score was recorded. The average HESI E2 score was 829.9 (SD = 112.8), with a range from 566 to 1,033. There was no significant correlation between the HESI E2 score and quiz or exam ML.

NCLEX-RN outcome

Of the 34 students in the cohort, 28 passed the NCLEX-RN and six failed (an 82.3% pass rate). We compared overall Lippincott PassPoint quizzing usage between the two NCLEX-RN groups (see Table 14) and practice exam usage (see Table 15).

In all cases, students who passed the NCLEX-RN had higher levels of usage and mastery in the quizzing area of Lippincott PassPoint. There was also homogeneity of variances as assessed by Levene’s test for equality of variances. Given the difference in sample sizes, a Mann-Whitney U test was run to examine differences in Lippincott PassPoint practice quizzing usage and mastery. Given the large number of questions answered by two outlying cases, we ran the comparison twice, once with and once without the outlier cases. In either case, results of a Mann Whitney U test indicated no statistically significant differences between the two groups — although ML was approaching significance in favor of those students who passed the NCLEX-RN.

Next, we looked at student usage and mastery within the practice exam section of Lippincott PassPoint (see Table 15).

On average, the 28 students who passed the NCLEX-RN took more practice exams (M = 8.4, SD = 2.6) than those who did not pass (M = 6.7, SD = .8). Those who passed also answered more practice exam questions (M = 713.8, SD = 220.6) than those who did not pass (M = 575, SD = 61.2), and had a higher average practice exam ML (M = 5.5, SD = 1.6) than those who didn’t pass (M = 5, SD = 1.9).

In all cases, there was homogeneity of variances as assessed by Levene’s test for equality of variances. Given the difference in sample sizes, a Mann-Whitney U test was run to examine differences in Lippincott PassPoint practice exam usage and mastery. Distributions of the number of practice exams for those who passed and did not pass were similar, as assessed by visual inspection. The median number of practice exams taken was statistically significantly different for those who passed (8.00) and did not pass the NCLEX-RN (6.5), U = 130, p = .037, using an exact sampling distribution for U (Dineen & Blakesley, 1973). There was also a significant difference in the median number of exam questions answered by those who passed the NCLEX-RN (675) and those who did not (562.5), U = 130.5, p =.033. There were no significant differences in exam ML between the two groups.

Comparison of NCLEX-RN groups HESI E2 score

Students who passed the NCLEX-RN also had a higher HESI E2 score (M = 836.2, SD = 110) than those who did not pass (M = 797, SD = 134.9), although results of a Mann-Whitney U revealed no significant differences between the groups.

Summary

• 82.3% of the study cohort passed the NCLEX-RN.
• In their final semester, students were assigned ML assignments (with a target ML of 5) and a 75-question practice NCLEX-RN.
• Average quizzing ML was 4.5 for all students and 4.3 for those who passed the NCLEX-RN.
• Students took an average of eight practice exams with an average practice exam ML of 5.4 for all students and 5.5 for those who passed the NCLEX-RN.
• There was a significant, positive correlation between quizzing ML and number of quiz questions answered.
• Thirty-one students took the HESI E2 and had an average score of 829. There was no difference in HESI E2 score based on NCLEX-RN outcome.