EVALUATION OF ATTRITION AMONG NURSING STUDENTS AS A NORMAL ALTERNATIVE IN A STRESS RESPONSE REPERTOIRE: ASSESSED BY AN INDIVIDUALIZED, SELF-REPORT INSTRUMENT (DROPOUT, PERSISTENCE, WITHDRAWAL).
Contributors: St. Louis University.
Published: 1984
Number of pages: 178
Subjects: Education, Higher.
Description: Students from three independent generic nursing programs participated in this study of attrition during the second semester of the freshman year. A stress-based model was synthesized from recent literature from which a hierarchy of stress responses was established. Self-report instruments were used to establish the subjects' usual responses and situation. Subjects were assigned groups within the stress hierarchy on the basis of their report responses.

The model married McLean's symptomatic approach with the highly detailed Beehr-Newman paradigm. McLean's work established a theoretical baseline from which the stress milieu could be assessed. The Beehr-Newman facet analysis provided specific descriptors that could be incorporated in the assessment tools. The resulting model approaches attrition wholistically, while remaining a manageable size. Previous attrition models were too broad to implement in full. This study utilizes "A Hierarchy of Adaptive Responses" which flowed from the theoretical construct of the model. The assessment instruments are presented in full within the appendices.

Stress Level Assessment to group subjects within a Stress Response Hierarchy produced significant trends between academic withdrawal and Stress Level, as well as combined withdrawals and Stress Level. The levels of significance were at least 0.01 and 0.05 respectively. Further, it was shown that as stress level increased, subjects' error in overestimating anticipated G.P.A. increased significantly at the 0.01 level. Failure to find significant relationships between Stress Level and withdrawal for personal reasons, as well as Stress Level and transfer-out decisions appeared as a result of insufficient cell size and the use of unfocused classical operational definitions. Future studies should subgroup transferring students and withdrawals for personal reasons by actual G.P.A. as well as response selection.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, Section: A, page: 1652.

Thesis (PH.D.)--SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY, 1984.

School code: 0193.