Research Determinants of nurses' intentions to Note leave their profession

There has been considerable research concerned with providing an understanding of the complex problem of nurse turnover (e.g. Werbel, 1985). Most of this body of research has attempted to determine what causes nurses to leave their jobs. Recently there have been several successful attempts to understand this process (e.g. Prestholdt, Lane and Mathews, 1987; Price and Mueller, 1981). There is another facet of the nurse turnover problem that has received comparatively little attention. That is, why do nurses leave the profession of nursing? The lack of attention to this problem is somewhat surprising since over one-third of nurses leave their profession at some time in their career and these nurses spend on the average seven years away from their jobs (Gulack, 1983). The studies that have been concerned with nurse turnover from the profession have generally been descriptive, post hoc, and atheoretical (e.g. Wandelt, Pierce and Widdowson, 1981). This research has not produced the same degree of understanding as has the research on nurse turnover from their job. Therefore, the purpose of the present research was to attempt to fill this gap by identifying the immediate determinants of a nurse's intention to leave her profession. The theoretical framework chosen for this research is the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein, 1980). This theory assumes that people use available information in a rational way to arrive at a behavioural decision such as leaving a profession. Specifically, the process is viewed as a hierarchical sequence leading from beliefs, through attitudes and social norms, to intention, and finally to behaviour. According to the theory, a person's behavioural intention (BI) to perform (or not perform) a specific behaviour is the immediate determinant of the behaviour (B). A recent meta-analysis has indicated the validity of this position for employee turnover (Steel and Ovalle, 1984). Intention, in turn, is determined by two constructs, the individual's personal affect or attitude toward performing (or not performing) the behaviour (Aact), and the perception of the social influence or normative pressure to perform (or not perform) the behaviour, referred to as subjective norm (SN). The theory can be expressed as a regression equation, B BI = w, Aact + W2 SN, where w, and W2 are the relative weights estimated by standardized regression coefficients. Both the affective and normative components of a decision are based on sets of specific beliefs held by the