Abstract
A national survey of nurse practitioner graduate schools was conducted in order to determine the extent of affective education being taught in these programs. All 129 nurse practitioner graduate schools that were listed in the 1994 National Directory of Nurse Practitioner Facilities and that offered master's degrees in nursing were telephoned. Seventy-three (57%) schools responded to inquiries about the presence or absence of a course concerning human sexuality. Nine (12%) schools had such a course and the instructors of these courses were invited to participate in a 30-minute telephone interview; five (56%) consented. Results showed that instructors spent an average of 15% of class time on personal attitudes of students. Although all agreed that negative attitudes of nursing students must be changed, and most agreed that students' personal sexual attitudes are important, only two of the five instructors included affective objectives in their course syllabi. It was concluded that specific courses in human sexuality are rarely offered to nurse practitioner graduate nursing students, and those instructors who do offer these courses do not emphasize affective teaching sufficiently to adequately prepare students for complete sexual assessments and care of clients. Suggestions for further affective sexuality education research are provided