Research Potential in Nursing Students: Competencies and Influencing Factors

Background: Nursing research expands scientific knowledge; advances practice and improves healthcare to enhance public well-being. It defines the scope of nursing and highlights its impact on individual health. Universities play a key role in conducting research, fostering student training, and translating knowledge into socioeconomic value. The objective is to determine the research competencies and associated factors in nursing students from a private university, 2024. Methods: Quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study. The population was 245 nursing students from the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th semesters of a private university in Lima, Peru. The technique was the survey, and the instrument was a questionnaire. The instrument was developed virtually through the Google Forms platform. After data collection, the database was established in Microsoft Excel which was later exported to the statistical program IBM SPSS version 27. Results: 245 students who met the inclusion criteria participated. According to the level of research competencies, 40% had a low level, 39.2% a medium level and only 20.8% obtained a high level. The factors significantly associated with the level of research competencies in nursing students were having received motivation from a teacher, research interest, belonging to a group or seedbed, studying a research course outside their curricular mesh and publishing articles (Significance<0.05). Conclusion: Most of the students have a low level of research competencies. Although most of the students received motivation from a teacher to carry out research work. The future scope of this study on research competencies in nursing students focuses on identifying and strengthening key areas of research training. Nursing schools are encouraged to develop research courses from the first academic semesters, and to encourage students to publish articles in conjunction with their respective health research centres.