A hypothetical model is developed to examine factors influencing nurses' achievement in a range of mental health nursing skills. The latent variables examined fall in four broad areas including the students': background (gender, predominant language used, age, prior education, previous nursing experience); previous successes with other undergraduate nursing topics (physical sciences, nursing and psychosocial sciences study areas); attitudes toward mental health nursing and mental illness causation; and relationship between learning environment and achievement (consists of such factors as the type of venues used for mental health nursing experience and teacher influence in topic delivery). Student achievement in mental health nursing skills is estimated by measuring student's self-rated level of confidence to undertake 20 nursing related tasks (undertaken before and after a unit of mental health studies was completed by students) and scores achieved using a 50 item multiple choice tests mental health nursing. The model examining student pathways to achievement is tested using Latent Variable Partial Least Square analysis (LVPLS). [Author abstract
