ORCHESTRATING A CAREER TRAJECTORY: THE NURSE EDUCATOR IN ACADEMIA.
Contributors: Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.)
Published: 1989
Number of pages: 186
Subjects: Education, Higher.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Women's Studies.
Description: The purpose of this study was to describe the construct career trajectory. The study described: (1) the development of a tool to measure career trajectory, (2) the career trajectory of doctorally prepared female nurse educators and (3) the relationship between career trajectory, membership in the American Academy of Nursing, ethnicity, area of nursing specialty, type of doctorate, and type of institution where employed. Data were collected from two groups (N = 327) of respondents from 40 National League for Nursing, accredited baccalaureate and higher degree programs.

The Hureston Career Trajectory Scale (HCTS) was developed by the investigator and is based on the works of Glasser & Strauss (1968), Hausm (1986), and Schein (1971). The scale elicited structured responses related to personal background data, perceptions of role conflict, role negotiation, rank and tenure status, perceptions of career progress, career planning, and research/scholarly activity.

Factor Analysis using principal components analysis and varimax rotation, resulted in five distinct factors which accounted for 39.3% of the total variance. The Chronbach alpha coefficient of reliability for the HCTS was.81.

The hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Multiple Regression. The ANOVA detected no significant difference between two groups on total career trajectory score or on four of the five factor scores. However, a significant difference was found on scores for factor 3 (role conflict). Regression Analysis revealed a significant positive relationship between career trajectory score, membership in the American Academy of Nursing, number of children and age.

The results of this study are encouraging, however, further refinement of the HCTS is indicated. The study is relevant to nursing because it is a research based assessment of nurse educator's career trajectory.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 50-08, Section: A, page: 2399.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 1989.

School code: 0163.