FACTORS AFFECTING NURSING STUDENTS' CHOICE OF TRADITIONAL OR NON-TRADITIONAL NURSING PROGRAMS (ALTERNATE, ASSOCIATE).
Contributors: State University of New York at Albany.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 166
Subjects: Education, Curriculum and Instruction.
Description: The goal of this investigation was to estimate what effect certain demographic variables and variables identified in the P. Cross Chain of Response model, have on an individual's decisions to choose a traditional full-time day nursing program, a traditional part-time evening program, or a non-traditional nursing program. The variables identified in the Chain of Response model which were tested included attitudes toward education, expectancy, self-evaluation, life transitions, the importance of an educational goal, information, and educational barriers. The demographic variables included age, marital status, number of children living in the household who required direct supervision, level of educational attainment and socio-economic status. A sixty-two item questionnaire (Survey of Factors Influencing College Choice) was developed and pilot-tested by the investigator to measure the variables. Set-wise discriminate analysis was used to study group separation with respect to the variables.

The subjects consisted of 466 nursing students from the three type of programs. Twenty-five percent of the subjects were randomly withheld from the analysis to provide a group for cross-validation. Analysis of the data identified two significant discriminant functions (p < .01). The variables which proved to discriminate the most among the three groups, traditional full-time nursing students, traditional part-time evening nursing students and non-traditional nursing students were institutional factors, age, level of educational attainment, a person's overall self-confidence in her abilities (expectancy), and type of information regarding the institutions attended. A second discriminant function consisted of variables which related to child care. This function was characterized by the number of children living in the home who required supervision and the number of children in school. Attitudes toward education as measured by the SFICC also added to the discriminatory power of this second discriminant function.

The randomly withheld group of subjects were classified correctly into one of the three groups in 60 percent of the cases. Primary discrimination along the first discriminant function was between traditional full-time nursing programs and the non-traditional nursing programs. Primary discrimination along the second discriminant function was between the traditional full-time day program and the traditional part-time evening program. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, Section: A, page: 1630.

Thesis (ED.D.)--STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY, 1984.

School code: 0668.