To perform principal component analysis on the status quo of nurses' research ability, and explore the status quo of their relevant research needs.

In this cross-sectional study, totally 588 clinical nurses working in a children's hospital in Hunan Province from July to December 2019 were selected by stratified random sampling and investigated with the self-designed questionnaire. The survey content included three parts: the first part was general information; the second part was the survey of the status quo of nurses' research ability; the third part was the survey of the status quo of nurses' research needs. A total of 588 questionnaires were distributed, and 577 questionnaires were collected, accounting for an effective recovery rate of 98.13%.

The three items with the higher scores in the survey of research ability status were frequently search for professional materials through the Internet (3.255±0.491) scores, able to perform statistical description (2.931±0.572) scores and able to use Chinese database (2.894±0.429) scores. The three items with the higher need for research ability were project application 80.94% (467/577) , paper writing 76.95% (444/577) and special lecture 71.92% (415/577) , whereas the three items with the lower need for research ability were continuing learning 46.10% (266/577) , retrieving documents 40.90% (236/577) and group symposium 38.30% (211/577) .

Nursing staff has relatively good ability in information retrieval and basic statistics, but relatively poor ability in paper writing. The research ability of nurses can be summarized as statistical analysis ability, information retrieval/document reading ability, research topic selection ability and paper writing ability. Attention should be paid to whether there are high research needs in the weak links of research ability, and nursing research guidance and education should be provided purposively.

Nursing staff; Principal component analysis; Research ability; Research need