Gender and students’ vocational choices in entering the field of nursing Leehu Zysberg, PhD Devon M. Berry, RN, PhD As the demand increases for nursing professionals, existing theories borrowed from the field of industrial psychology may help employers and recruiters to identify appropriate candidates, train, hire and pro- mote nurses in a more effective manner. An important component of these theories is understanding an indi- vidual’s motivation to choose a certain profession. This preliminary study examined gender differences in motivations to enter the field of nursing. Two theoreti- cal points of view were offered to account for the differences: Holland and Row’s models of person-job congruence and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One hundred and sixty (24 men and 136 women) freshmen from 3 nursing programs were asked to report their motivations to enter nursing. A new instrument based on the models mentioned above and representing 2 basic motivations, self-actualization and survival needs, was developed for the purposes of this study. While both genders mentioned self-actualization as their main motivation for entering nursing, men tended to give survival needs more weight than women did. The motivation patterns as well as the gender differ- ences are discussed in light of recent trends in nursing and within the framework of personnel selection and training. D espite the gradual changes in nursing as a profes- sion, its image and composition remain predomi- nantly female. Male nurses are a minority repre- senting only 5-6% of the persons holding a nursing license in the US. 1 A recent surge in the interest in nursing has placed the profession in the privileged position of increasing its level of selectivity when screening candidates applying to schools of nursing. Understanding the role of motivation in the choice of nursing as a vocation and, more specifically, how gender affects motivations for choosing nursing as a career, may provide insight into recruitment, retention, and the redressing of the gender gap in nursing. The aim of this preliminary study was to assess the effect of gender differences on college freshmen’s motivations to select nursing as a career. One of the theoretical frameworks employed in this study is the model of vocational choice based on Holland’s 2 and Roe’s 3 classifications of professions and jobs. This model focuses on the congruence between a vocational profile of a given profession/job and a personal profile, maintaining that people choose profes- sions requiring skills, tendencies and capacities that they possess. 4 Various professions were originally clas- sified into 8 fields: Business, organization, general/ culture, service, arts and entertainment, outdoors, sci- ence and technology. 3 The fields are set in a spherical structure assuming that proximity between fields also represents a conceptual proximity in fields of interest. For example, “technology” is adjacent to both “science” and “business” while being farther away from “arts and entertainment”. Other models, stemming from this orig- inal model, have been suggested through the years but they have maintained the same underlying assumptions and ideas conveyed by Roe’s model. 5,6 The dynamics of the models have also remained very similar, assum- ing that congruence should occur between the “person- ality” of a given job and the personality of the person choosing it. The notion of congruence between individual per- sonality and job personality is not new in the organiza- tional psychology literature. While research is still ongoing, evidence points to the consequences of con- gruency, such as job satisfaction, levels of turnover, and job performance. 4,7 The existing evidence suggests that the stronger the match is between the person’s profile of motivations, interests and skills, and the job’s “person- ality” (demands, requirements, environmental charac- teristics), the higher are the chances of achieving more positive outcomes, as mentioned above. The models suggest that congruence is more of a continuum than a categorical state (eg, the existence or lack of congru- ence). Based on this evidence, it has become common- place to measure vocational interests in vocational counseling, rehabilitation, educational counseling, and job screening. Leehun Zysberg is a visiting faculty at the College of Nursing, Seattle University, Seattle, WA. Devon M. Berry is an assistant professor at the Department of Nursing, Cedarville University, Cedarville, OH. Reprint requests: Dr. Leehu Zysberg, College of Nursing, Seattle University, Seattle, WA, 98122. E-mail: LeehuZysberg@yahoo.com Nurs Outlook 2005;53:193-198. 0029-6554/05/$–see front matter Copyright © 2005 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2005.05.001 193 J U L Y /A U G U S T N U R S I N G O U T L O O K