Massachusetts Nursing Profession Entrants Survey, 1988

The purpose of this survey was to gather information toassist educators, administrators, and policymakers in the developmentof strategies for the recruitment and retention of registered nurses.To that end, nurses taking the Massachusetts licensure exam werequeried about their reasons for going into nursing, their nursingcareer goals, their attitudes toward the nursing profession, theirpreferences for various branches of the nursing profession, and theimportance they placed on various aspects of work in general, e.g., jobsecurity, high income, and good opportunities for advancement.Respondents were also questioned about their job searches and theircurrent or impending jobs: how the job was found, number ofapplications filled out and offers received, number of hours usuallyworked, earnings, type of medical facility, shift usually worked andpreferred, commuting distances, public transportation and child careneeds, whether student clinical experience was obtained with theemployer, planned length of stay at the job, and the importance ofvarious factors that attracted them to the position, such as theattractiveness of the town or city where the job was located, salaryand benefit levels, availability of parking and child care, and jobflexibility. In addition, the survey asked respondents how and whenthey decided to become nurses, how they found out about educationaloptions in nursing, how much basic nursing education they received andhow it was financed, which factors attracted them to the schools fromwhich they graduated, and how much of their basic nursing education wasdevoted to clinical experience. Background information on respondentsincludes age, sex, citizenship, race, ethnic group, marital status,education, education goals, family income, number and ages of relatedpersons living in the household, usage of child care and elderly careservices, parents' education and occupations, and mother's employmentstatus at various stages of the respondent's childhood and adolescence.