Educating a sufficient nursing workforce to provide high quality, compassionate, and ethical care to an increasingly diverse population is an ongoing challenge and opportunity for nurse educators. Current literature highlights the importance of engaging students in learning to strengthen student achievements. Fostering student engagement within nursing courses is particularly important. Grit (consistency of interest and perseverance of effort) is a factor that may be associated with student

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... se engagement. Demographic characteristics of age, gender, race/ethnicity, prior education, degree program, and self-reported grade point average (GPA) also may be factors associated with student course engagement. Guided by a conceptual model derived from the literature, the purpose of this study was to determine whether grit and demographic characteristics were associated with student course engagement (skills, emotion, participation/interaction, and performance) within a nursing course. Using an exploratory, descriptive, cross-sectional design, a convenience sample of 97 nursing students in a didactic health assessment course was administered the Student Course Engagement Questionnaire (SCEQ), visual analog scales for student engagement, Grit-S Scale, and a Student Demographic Characteristics form. Using multiple regression, 22% of the variance (21% Adjusted) of total student engagement (SCEQ) was explained by total grit scores (Grit-S) F(1,95) = 26.54, p