The present paper studied the effects perceived by the professors of Nursing Degrees of an evaluation process promoted by the National Council for Higher Education Evaluation (CNAVES) and carried out by the Evaluation Council of the Portuguese Polytechnic Institutes Association (ADISPOR).

The systematic analysis of this evaluation process led us to the following questions: what was the purpose of this evaluation process? How was the work carried out by the External Evaluation Committees (CEA) perceived by the Institutions? What did the persons responsible for the courses do with the recommendations? Did the process promote improvements in the courses? Did it encourage the development of an institutional quality culture?

As a result, we established as the main purpose of this study to understand to what extent the evaluation process to which the nursing degrees were submitted was seen as having contributed to the improvement of the courses and the development of an institutional quality culture.

A set of more specific goals was also established, which helped to define the direction to be followed throughout the study:

a) Understanding the global perception that the leaders of the institutions, the institutional coordinators, the schools coordinators, the professors involved in the evaluation process and also those not involved in the evaluation process, had on its usefulness for the improvement of the Nursing degrees;

b) Identify the fields, amongst those included in the evaluation process, to which this process had been considered more relevant in the improvement of the degrees in Nursing;

c) Identify possible differences between the three groups of subjects in the several fields included in the evaluation process, regarding the assessment about the utility of the evaluation process to the improvement of the nursing degrees.

d) Assess if there was a real contribution of the evaluation process to the development of an institutional quality culture in the schools where the nursing degrees in study were being lectured;

e) Understanding how the contribution of the reviews of the External Evaluation Committees for the improvement process of the Nursing degrees was perceived, either in general and by the different groups of subjects;

f) Knowing whether the institutions/schools where the nursing degrees were evaluated, developed an effort to implement the recommendations resulting from the work of the External Evaluation Committees, and why;

g) Check if there were bias differences regarding the several aspects of the evaluation process, between participants who had integrated External Evaluation Committees and subjects who did not participate in them.

As to the fields to which the evaluation process might or might have not contributed, we used those defined in the Guidelines for the Evaluation Procedure (2002) by the External Evaluation Committees: a) course organization; b) functioning of the program; c) Scientific work associated to the course; d) human resources available; e) facilities; f) equipment; g) results; h) working environment; i) quality culture; j) course dissemination; k) social image of the course.

These were also the fields used in the construction of a questionnaire, in the planning of the interviews that were made and in the categorization of the content analysis that was done to the interviews and to the Committees’ evaluation reports.

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