JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social justice (SJ) is increasingly relevant to nursing education, where professional practice requires attention to health inequities, human rights, and the needs of people and communities experiencing vulnerability. Service-learning (SL) may support SJ education by integrating academic learning, community engagement, and critical reflection.

Objective:

This study aims to examine whether changes in undergraduate nursing students’ attitudes toward social justice differ between those who participated in a service-learning intervention and those who did not, and to explore the experiences, perceptions, and meanings attributed to social justice by students who participated in the intervention.

Methods:

This protocol describes a convergent mixed methods study conducted in an undergraduate nursing program in Spain. The quantitative component used a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with an intervention group participating in an SL intervention and a comparison group not participating in the intervention. Attitudes toward SJ were assessed using the validated Spanish version of the Social Justice Scale (SJS), which has demonstrated adequate internal consistency. The qualitative component used an interpretive design based on individual semistructured interviews with students from the intervention group. Qualitative data will be analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Postintervention quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently and will be analyzed separately. The findings will be integrated through a joint display and narrative comparison to identify convergence, complementarity, and divergence.

Results:

Ethics approval was obtained in April 2023. Quantitative data were collected from April 2023 to January 2024. Of 79 participants, 75 had complete preintervention and postintervention data: 22 in the intervention group and 53 in the comparison group. Nine intervention-group students completed individual interviews between December 2023 and January 2024. At manuscript submission, data collection, questionnaire completeness checks, and transcript verification had been completed. The principal quantitative analyses, formal qualitative analysis, and mixed methods integration had not yet begun.

Conclusions:

This study will combine quantitative and qualitative evidence to examine how participation in an SL intervention is associated with SJ-related attitudes and how students interpret distribution, recognition, and democratic participation after the experience. The findings may inform the design and evaluation of SJ education in undergraduate nursing curricula. Clinical Trial: Not applicable.