This paper reports from an ongoing research project, where the aim is to strengthen the focus on clinical nursing research and evidence-based practice in the OD. The project consists of a baseline study (presented here), an educational intervention based on the baseline study and a process evaluation of the intervention (to be documented in a forthcoming paper). The aim of this paper is to determine the self-perceived knowledge, competencies, interest and motivation regarding research among orthopaedic nurses in an orthopaedic department at a Danish Regional Hospital. METHODS Design A descriptive cross-sectional survey (Polit & Beck, 2008) was conducted in an orthopaedic department at a Danish Regional Hospital. Participants All nurses employed at the OD (n=87) were invited to participate in the study. The nurses related to clinical practice through their positions as leading nurse (n=1), head section nurses (n=4), clinical nurses specializing in education, quality and development (n=3), and registered nurses (n=79). The department has room for 72 patients with acute and elective orthopaedic disabilities, fractures and infections, and consists of four sections, each specializing in different orthopaedic surgical procedures. Questionnaire The questionnaire was developed based on the Akerjordet and colleagues (2012) questionnaire used to determine clinical nurses’ interest and motivation for research in a Norwegian University Hospital. Their questionnaire was a Norwegian translation of the Research Needs Analysis Survey (Gething et al., 2001) and consisted of 59 questions covering the seven stages of the research process: exploratory, literature review, design, preparation for action, action, data analysis and the writing-up phase (Akerjordet et al., 2012). Items from the original Akerjordet-questionnaire were retained, such as: the participants’ current skills and the areas of research skills they wanted to improve; their engagement in research and their desire to be more involved in research; the participants’ perceived barriers from colleagues, management and their collaboration partners. Through a discussion among the authors, decisions were made to broaden the questions about the participants’ knowledge and competencies to fit our study aim. The questionnaire was finally reviewed by the co-author for face and content validity (Polit & Beck, 2008) and by two registered nurses from an OD in a Copenhagen University Hospital, for comprehension of questions. Reliability was explored in a discussion between the two registered nurses and the first author about the content of the questionnaire and the consistency of the questionnaires ability the measure the target attribute. Furthermore the questionnaire was based on Akerjordet and colleagues’ (Akerjordet et al., 2012) version of the Research Needs Analysis Survey (Gething et al., 2001) which had a very high level of internal consistency with a Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .90 to .97. The final questionnaire included 24 questions in four main categories. The first category of questions included questions (n=9) about general information about the participants’ characteristics. The second category included questions (n=3) about the participants’ self-perceived theoretical knowledge of research in general and their practical research competencies (1 question about how they evaluate their knowledge of research design, methodology, qualitative and quantitative methods – to be scored on a 4-point Likert scale from ‘excellent’ (4) to ‘poor’ (1); 1 question about how they currently gain knowledge of research results assessed through multiple choices; 1 question about how they evaluate their competencies in different research areas – to be scored on a 4-point Likert scale from ‘excellent’ (4) to ‘poor’ (1)). The third category included questions (n=5) about the participants’ interest in nursing research (1 question about their interest in nursing research – to be scored on a 4-point Likert scale from ‘high’ (4) to ‘none’ (1); 1 question about whether they had participated in a research study and, if so, what kind; 1 question about their current participation in research studies; 1 question about their interest in developing and improving their research knowledge