U-Texas Men in Nursing Results

[arochlen]

As many people on this forum participated in this survey, I wanted to send along a summary - that I sent to the participants. I thought you all might find it useful. Thanks to everyone who participated.. This will be submitted for publication soon.


Dear Men in Nursing Research Participants,

Thank you for participating in the University of Texas research project on men in nursing. I’m writing to provide a brief (relatively brief) overview of our results. We hope to present these data at the American Psychological Association Conference in Boston (August, 2008) and prepare the data for publication in an academic men’s journal (likely Psychology of Men and Masculinity).

To date, the majority of the research in men and nursing to date has been qualitative (interview based on small samples) or has focused on the reasons why men choose to enter the nursing field. However, much less is known about precisely how different types of men who are employed in nursing report doing in their lives and work and what barriers still exist for men in this profession.

For the current project we hoped to add to this area of research by collecting data on a large and diverse sample of men. Our primary goals were to: a) Gain a sense of how men in nursing are reporting (compared to other samples) levels of life and career satisfaction and b) Within this sample, identify significant factors that predict these variables.

In addition, we were interested in gaining a sense of whether different types of men experienced gender-related barriers in the workforce and how this was related to work-satisfaction. For the purpose of the current study, we created a scale addressing gender-related work barriers that essentially evaluated whether men in nursing considered there to be (or not be) barriers or stigma from others at work because of being a male.

The sample

Complete data was submitted by 175 men in nursing with a mean age of 40 years old. Seventy-nine percent of the participants identified as Caucasian, 6.3% as Hispanic/Latino, 5.7% as Asian American/Pacific Islander, 2.9% as African American. Forty-seven percent of the participants were married/separated, 36.6% were single/divorced, and 16.6% were living with a partner. Regarding sexual orientation, 68.6% percent of the participants identified themselves as heterosexual or primarily heterosexual, 24% as homosexual or primarily homosexual, 4% as bi-sexual, and 1.7% were uncertain or preferred not to respond. Sexual orientation was not a focus of the project – just one of many questions used to describe the demographics of the sample.

Thirty-one percent of the participants reported incomes between $30,000 and $50,000, 57.7% reported incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, 8.6% reported incomes between $100,000 and $150,000, and 2.9% reported incomes greater than $150,000. Sixteen percent of the participants worked full-time, while 84% worked part-time. Sixty-eight percent of the participants identified as registered nurses, 4.6% as licensed practical nurses or licensed vocational nurses, 4.0% as certified nurse specialists, 4.0% as nurse practitioners, 2.3% as military nurses, less than 1% as physician assistants, and less than 1% held other professional titles. Sixty-seven percent of participants reported a nursing specialty, with the most frequently reported specialty being trauma, emergency, or critical care (n = 44). Eighteen participants described their specialty as adult care, family practice, or pediatric nursing, while 14 participants considered themselves research, administration, or education specialists

Overall Comparisons of Life and Career Satisfaction.
Using other published data and norms, we were able to make broad comparisons in terms of how our sample reported doing in terms of their life and work satisfaction. In general, this sample appeared to have moderate to high levels of both work and life satisfaction, very similar to other adult samples of men. Levels of social support (partners/family/friends) were moderate to high and again similar to most other samples. We also measured different aspects that have been associated with traditional masculine norms. Again, similar scores were found as contrasted to other published data. The only factor that was significantly below (less than one standard deviation) to published norms was a factor called “conflict between work and family.” This suggests that this sample seemed to have less conflict between their work and home lives than other samples of working men.

Predictors or “correlates” of Life and Career Satisfaction

Importantly, there was a considerable range in participants’ reports of their degrees of work and life satisfaction. In other words while overall mean data suggested moderate to high levels of life and career satisfaction, clearly some men reported doing great while others reported not doing as well. We were interested sought to indentify which constructs were related to (or predicted) distress and life and relationship satisfaction. We found several significant variables described below.

Life Satisfaction

Several significant results were found in regard to Life Satisfaction. Higher levels of life satisfaction were reported by men who described being supported by their partners, experienced fewer gender-related work barriers, were more confident in their job-skills, experienced few difficulties expressing emotion, low levels of work/life conflict, and were comfortable with closeness with other men.

Work Satisfaction

The main significant finding with work satisfaction was perceived gender-related work barriers. In other words, men who perceived fewer gender-related work barriers (essentially felt people treated them no differently than female nurses) were more satisfied at work. This was also somewhat related (although not quite as strongly) to perceived opportunities for promotion.

Gender Related Work Barriers

Men who reported fewer perceived gender-related work barriers had high degrees of social support from family, confidence in their job skills, had lower levels of conflict in their work and family lives, and were comfortable in the expression of their emotions. It should also be noted that the mean on this scale was 20.12 out of a possible 30 (possible scores 6-30). This does seem to reflect that overall the sample did seem to consider there to be significant obstacles in their profession relative to being male. As with most scales of course, there was a considerable range in responses.

Final Comments

The results of this study are quite interesting and there are many opportunities to expand and discuss the results further. We are also confident that this will be a nice contribution to the literature on men and nursing, and more broadly to the field of non-traditional careers. In general, we think it sends a very positive message about men in nursing – but also tells us something about important factors that help to predict positive experiences in life and career for men in these positions.

Some of the results may be surprising to you while others may see it all as “common sense.” You may also consider the extent (if any) that these findings coincide with your experiences.. In the article, we will be commenting much more on the implications, limitations, and the need for more research on this topic.

We also appreciate the MANY detailed and interesting responses to the open-ended questions in the project. Some of these responses will ideally be used (anonymously of course) in the article to help illustrate the data-supported findings.

I hope that maybe you all can take a small piece of this study and think about how it fits (or doesn’t fit) into your unique situation. For now, I did want to share these results with everyone who participated. Again, I thank everyone for participating and contributing to this area of research.

All the best to you in your careers and personal lives.

Kindly,

Aaron Rochlen, Ph.D.

[orionseal]

Thank you so much for letting us peek at these results, I am looking forward to a more in-depth look at the info.

Please keep keeping us informed.

[Educator Nurse]

That's nice .. we will use this instructions in our life ..

Good luck ..