Because the nursing assessment is important factors to provide a specific care to individual patient and to establish the nursing specialty as well, nursing students are expected to acquire this competence during the fundamental nursing education. This competence is based on one's scientific consciousness covering both wide knowledge and experiences, it is likely that experiences obtained through clinical works might result in the advancement of this competence. However, our previous crosssectional studies, held in 1992, indicated that individual nurse's competence exhibited no prominent advancement. Therefore, we designed the longitudinal study focused on the same panels to evaluate the advancement of this competence. The same fill-in-the-blank questionnaires mailed in 1992 which consisted of paper-simulated patient were delivered again in 1997, and replies from 46 "four-years experienced" nurses were analyzed by comparing with those from 100 novice nurses obtained in 1992.

As a result, both novice and experienced nurses exhibited poor competence for assessment and no clear advancement was observed. However, competence for analysis, and problem-extraction and priority setting were significantly high in novice and experienced nurses, respectively. In addition, it was suggested that the advancement of the competence of nursing assessment seemed to be correlated with one's background of the diploma program.

The relationships between entrance examination variables and the students'records in the nursing program courses were examined. The entrance examination variables were scores obtained by subjects on their entrance examination, which included English, Mathematics, and Science (selection of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics). The variables of the records in the nursing program were the test scores in the essential courses taken by all subjects. The data for 743 students (641 students admitted on the basis of entrance examination scores between 1986 and 1992 and 102 students with recomendation entrance between 1990 and 1992) were analyzed.There was a moderate correlation between entrance examination scores in English and records in English in the nursing program and between entrance examination scores in Science and records in Natural Science subjects in the nursing program by Pearson product moment correlations. There were a weak or no correlations between entrance examination scores in English, Mathematics, and Science and records in other subjects in the nursing program. Multiple regression analysis using the records in every subject in the nursing program as a standard variable and entrance examination scores in English, Mathematics, and Science as an explanatory variable showed that entrance examination scores weakly influenced the records of every subject in the nursing program, that entrance examination scores in Mathematics had hardly any influence on the records in the nursing program. The average record of each subject in the nursing program of students with recomendation entrance was higher than that of students admitted on the basis of entrance examination scores. The average scores of each subject in the nursing program of students who had graduated from a senior high school and prepared for entrance examination was lower than those of students who have just graduated from a senior high school. These findings indicate that entrance examinations are required to improve in accordance with the goals in a baccalaureate nursing program.