Reliability and limitations of the study
The study was a national survey of all Finnish nursing teachers working in polytechnics. This study reports only one part of a large survey. Response rate was 46%, which suggest that the data represent the population moderately. Electronic survey by e-mail provided a poor response rate (22%), which could be completed by re-running the survey with postal questionnaire (46%). The reasons for the low response rate may relate to the length of the questionnaire, business of work or negative attitude towards the topic of research. Our dependent measure, NTRUS, was constructed for this study. The content validity of NTRUS was based on the literature of nurses' research utilisation and face validity on an expert panel and pilot- testing. The factor loading of most variables were high, but three variables had loading under the suggested 0.40. Internal consistency of the measure was quite good as assessed by Cronbach alpha (varying between 0.63 and 0.85). In future, the validity of NTRUS needs more testing.