Abstract
Results of several research projects show that entering nursing students are characterized by a distinctive set of personality needs; that several nursing student groups considered together show similar patterns for the years while in school; and that the effects of training show a consistent pattern of producing change in certain personality needs in directions opposite to or greater than those which would be expected from maturational effects. Further, training also operates to suppress changes in some personality needs and to enhance changes in others.
This chapter was written with the assistance of Jon Plapp.
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Notes
Cohen, Y., Social Structure and Personality, Holt, New York, Chapter 7, “Occupations and Professions,” 1961, pp. 187–224.
Merton, R. K., “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality” in Personality in Nature, Society and Culture, ed. by C. Kluckhohn, Knopf, New York, 1955, pp. 376–385.
Parsons, T., “The Professions and Social Structure,” in Essays in Sociological Theory, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1949, pp. 34–99.
Levinson, D., Role, Personality and Social Structure in the Organizational Setting, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 1959, pp. 170–180.
The work of Roe, A., The Psychology of Occupations, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1956.
Henry, W. E., The Business Executive: The Psychodynamics of a Social Role, American Journal of Sociology, 54, 1949, pp. 286–291, is relevant.
Super, D., The Psychology of Careers, Harper, New York, 1957, p. 240.
Roe, A., A Psychological Study of Eminent Psychologists and Anthropologists, and a Comparison with Biological and Physical Scientists, Psychological Monographs, 67, 2, 1953.
Psathas, G., Toward a Theory of Occupational Choice for Women, Sociology and Social Research, 52, 1968, pp. 253–268.
Edwards, A. L., Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, Revised Manual, Psychological Corp., New York, 1959.
Smith, G. M., The Role of Personality in Nursing Education, Nursing Research, 14, 1965, pp. 54–58, reported EPPS scores for high-school students who were successful applicants to the Catherine Laboure School of Nursing, a Roman Catholic 3-year diploma school of nursing, situated in the Greater Boston area. The girls, all of whom matriculated between 1957 and 1960, took the EPPS during their senior high-school year and were later admitted to the nursing school.
Reece, M. M., Personality Characteristics and Success in a Nursing Program, Nursing Research, 10, 1961, pp. 172–176, reported scores for a group of 87 freshmen in a diploma school at Wayne State University. All were tested subsequent to the beginning of their training. Reece subdivided his group into 55 students who went on to successfully complete their nursing training and another 32 students who left school for various reasons (including academic failure, marriage, lack of interest) during the 3-year period.
Klett, C. J., Performance of High School Students on the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21, 1957, pp. 68–72. This sample of EPPS scores was collected following administration of the test in two King County high schools outside the city of Seattle, Washington. One high school was located in an outlying town in the county, while the other was in an expanding residential suburban area of Seattle. Data were reported by Klett on a total of 834 high-school girls, of whom about 330 were sophomores, 280 juniors, and 200 seniors. No significant correlations were found between grades and need scores. Correlations between age and need scores were also very low (the highest being —.18) when a total group consisting of the 834 girls as well as 799 boys was considered. These low correlations make the use of the total group of high-school girls, rather than a group consisting only of seniors, justified in the comparisons reported in the present study.
Gynther, M. and Gertz, B., Personality Characteristics of Student Nurses in South Carolina, Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 1962, pp. 277–284.
Williamson, H. M., Edmonston, W. E., and Stern, J. A., Use of the EPPS for Identifying Personal Role Attributes Desirable in Nursing, Journal of Health and Human Behavior, 4, 1963, pp. 266–275.
The staff-nurse group was composed of three groups. One, consisting of 32 nurses from a St. Louis general hospital, was reported by Williamson, Edmonston and Stern. The second group was made up of 50 nurses from another St. Louis hospital tested in the course of our research and the third was a group of 167 general medical and surgical nurses reported by Navran, L. and Stauffacher, J. C., A Comparative Analysis of the Personality Structure of Psychiatric and Nonpsychiatric Nurses, Nursing Research, 7, 1958, pp. 64–67. The three groups were combined into a single staff-nurse group, N = 249, despite the fact that there were differences among them.
Campbell, D. T. and Stanley, J. C, “Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research on Teaching,” Chapter 5 in Gage, N. L. (ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching, Rand Mc-Nally, Chicago, 1963, p. 230. They note that a “combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons should be more systematically employed in developmental studies. The cross-sectional study by itself confounds maturation with selection and mortality. The longitudinal study confounds maturation with repeated testing and with history. It alone is probably better than the cross-sectional though its greater cost gives it higher prestige. The combination, perhaps with repeated cross-sectional comparisons at various times, seems ideal.”
Levitt, E. E., Lubin, B., and Zuckerman, M., The Student Nurse, the College Woman and the Graduate Nurse: A Comparative Study, Nursing Research, 11, 1962, pp. 80–82, using student nurses in a collegiate program, also noted a decrease in needs Nurturance and Endurance, a higher score on Heterosexuality than adult women, and increases in Order. However, Deference increases. They conclude that “by the time she has practiced for some years, the student’s goals had shifted from the need to serve suffering humanity—which was probably her main reason for choosing nursing as a career—to attention to technical skills, routine and ritual, and to supervisors and doctors as the major source of approval.”
Williamson, H. M., Edmonston, W. E., and Stern, J. A., Use of the EPPS for Identifying Personal Role Attributed Desirable in Nursing, Journal of Health and Human Behavior, 4, 1963, pp. 266–275.
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Psathas, G. (1968). The Personality of the Student Nurse. In: The Student Nurse in the Diploma School of Nursing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-40263-4_5
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