THE BEHAVIORAL CONTENT OF THE WORK OF THE MINNESOTA SCHOOL NURSE (ADMINISTRATION).
Contributors: University of Minnesota.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 209
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This study delineated the contemporary role profiles of practicing school nurses by analyzing and categorizing their overt managerial administrative behaviors in the organizational context in which they occurred. Forty-seven randomly selected school nurses of Minnesota participated in providing information which was used: (1) To compare commonalities and differences between perceived versus actual categories of activities, issues, persons, functions and purposes consuming the nurse's organizational time. (2) To determine the predominant communication modes utilized by school nurses and the influence of those modes on the patterns of the school nurses' responses. (3) To examine relationships between situational contexts--institutional size, unit enrollment, school level, size of schools--and their influence on the managerial work patterns of the school nurses. (4) To examine the relationship between personal and experiential variables--age, sex, academic background, administration of health program experience--and their influence on the managerial work patterns of the school nurses. (5) To describe school health program administrative job characteristics which influence the task behaviors and roles of the school nurses.

The study employed the use of a two-part questionnaire aimed at providing a description of the institutional milieu, personal, and experiential background of each participant and a profile of the school nurse's perceived behavioral patterns. A second instrument--the activity record card--was a self-recording device used by the participants for recording their own task-performance behaviors at randomly sampled daily time periods for a ten work day period. The third set of data included the chronology of mail and contact patterns for a two week period of working days collected by the school nurse's secretary or assistant on a specially designed form.

All instruments were pilot tested with school nurses external to the study sample.

Descriptive data collected from the participants were used to develop profiles. Data on behavioral patterns were analyzed by discrepancy scores; the t-test was used in some instances to test for discrepancies related to institutional and personal variables and behaviors. T-test was used to examine data pertaining to purposive actions of the school nurses. Descriptive statistics were used to provide an array of percentiles and distributions.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-12, Section: B, page: 3768.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 1984.

School code: 0130.