VOCATIONAL NEEDS, NEED FULFILLMENT, AND JOB SATISFACTION AMONG REGISTERED NURSES.
Contributors: University of Minnesota.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 206
Subjects: Psychology, Industrial.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The purpose of this study was to investigate correlates of job satisfaction in nurses, and to explore the extent to which satisfaction, vocational needs and perceptions of the work environment were related to selected demographic, personal and work environment characteristics. Subjects were staff nurses (182) and head nurses or nurse managers (39) employed in Twin Cities hospitals. Participants completed questionnaires that measured job satisfaction, vocational needs and perceptions of reinforcers in the work environment.

Indices of need-reinforcer correspondence were calculated by correlating individuals' profiles of vocational needs with the patterns of reinforcers in the staff nurse work environment as perceived by the head nurse and staff nurse groups. Each staff nurse's pattern of vocational needs was also correlated with the occupational reinforcer pattern produced by her own ratings of the work environment and with the occupational reinforcer pattern produced by head nurses' ratings in 1968. These four correspondence indices were then correlated with satisfaction measures to compare the strength of the relationship of satisfaction to correspondence with the different occupational reinforcer patterns. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to compare the strength of the correspondence-satisfaction relationships of the different occupational reinforcer patterns controlling for the effects of demographic and environmental variables.

Results showed few relationships between satisfaction and the demographic and environmental variables chosen for study. Neither vocational needs nor perceptions of reinforcers differed across work settings for staff nurses. Need-reinforcer correspondence was significantly related to satisfaction. Correspondence of needs with the individual's own perceptions of reinforcers was most strongly related to the satisfaction measures, followed by correspondence with the perceptions of head nurses, staff nurses, and the pattern of reinforcers generated in 1968. In 31 of 32 regression equations, need-reinforcer correspondence made the greatest contribution to prediction of satisfaction.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: B, page: 6135.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 1990.

School code: 0130.