Factors Influencing Intent to Stay of Nursing Faculty in Selected Schools of Nursing in Sixteen States within the Southern Region

The current nursing faculty shortage makes understanding intent to stay a step toward slowing the exodus of faculty. A wealth of literature exists on reasons nursing faculty leave academia; however, little research exists on reasons nursing faculty stay. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to discover a parsimonious set of predictor variables for intent to stay in nursing education. An online survey was conducted over six weeks in the spring of 2006 using four instruments, Index of Job Satisfaction, Mentoring Scale, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, and Leadership Behavior Description Questionnaire. A random cluster sample of schools of nursing in states within the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) resulted in a sample of 39 nursing schools. In total, there were 316 responses from 782 potential participants; the response rate was 40.4%. Findings indicated that levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment were within the range for normative means. Intent to Stay scores for one year and three years were high. Although scores were lower for intent to stay five years, there was more variability in scores. Job satisfaction had a significant positive correlation with Intent to Stay in one year and five years. Slightly over half, 55.7% (176), reported having a mentor; however, mentoring scores alone were not found to significantly predict intent to stay. Organizational commitment scores alone significantly predicted intent to stay one year and five years explaining 19.3% and 20.6% of the variance respectively. Mentored faculty scored significantly higher than non-mentored faculty on organizational commitment. Leadership behaviors measuring consideration significantly predicted intent to stay one year and five years, but explained a small amount of variance, 6.8% and 8.5%. Stepwise multiple regression results with all predictor variables indicated that organizational commitment explained 19.7% of the variance in intent to stay one year and 21.2% of the variance in intent to stay five years. There was not a significant prediction for intent to stay three years. Implications for policy and practice are discussed as are topics for future research