SELF-ACTUALIZATION PROFILES AND PERCEPTIONS OF ACADEMIC, FINANCIAL, AND SOCIAL FACTORS RELATED TO RETENTION OF BLACK AND WHITE BACCALAUREATE NURSING STUDENTS (STUDENT RETENTION).
Contributors: University of Texas at Austin.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 178
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The purposes of this descriptive-correlational study of black and white female baccalaureate senior/nursing students in predominantly white colleges and universities were to: (1) compare their self-actualization profiles; (2) compare their perceptions of how important selected academic, financial, and social factors are in influencing retention; and (3) determine whether those who score high on self-actualization differ from those who score low on self-actualization in terms of their perception of how important selected academic, financial, and social factors are in influencing retention. Shostrom's Self-Actualization Theory (1966) provided the conceptual framework for this study.

This study was based on the analyses of survey responses of 102 senior level baccalaureate nursing students from nine public and private colleges and universities located in the southern and midwestern regions of the United States. Subjects completed the following instruments: The Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) (Shostrom, 1966), and the Factors Perceived to Influence Retention (FPIR), a questionnaire developed for this study.

Descriptive data derived from the Inner-Directed (I), Time Competence (TC), and Self-Actualizing Values (SAV) scales of the POI provided a general self-actualization profile of the sample. Frequency distribution, measures of central tendency and dispersion, standard deviations, ranges and MANOVA were computed to answer the research questions.

Conclusions included the following: (1) there was no statistically significant difference in the self-actualization profiles of the black and white subjects, (2) there was a statistically significant difference between subjects' perceptions of how important selected academic and social factors were in influencing their retention; however, there was no statistically significant difference between black and white subjects' perception of the importance of financial factors, and (3) there were statistically significant differences between subjects who scored high on self-actualization as compared with those who scored lower on self-actualization with respect to their perceptions of the FPIR's academic, financial, and social factors.

These findings have implications for nursing education, and provide support for further research examining behaviors and perceptions of academic, financial, and social factors professed to be important to students' attainment of their academic goal.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-04, Section: B, page: 1888.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, 1993.

School code: 0227.