Implications for practice and research

• ■ This study underscores the importance of fostering new graduate nurses' critical thinking dispositions (CTD) as possible predictors of research use in practice.

• ■ Emphasising new graduates' CTD in nursing education may also increase research use as defined in the Research Use Questionnaire (RUQ).

• ■ Use of multivariate analysis in this study highlights a need for complex ways of examining predictors of research use.

• ■ Further research to confirm possible predictors of research use is needed.

Context

There is a significant and growing interest in understanding how knowledge, and more specifically research evidence, is applied to nursing practice.1 ‘Research utilisation is, at its simplest, the use of research to guide practice, and is particularly concerned with the use of research evidence – …