MS

thesisAn ongoing concern has been the low percentage of nurses who are members of their state nurses' organization. The goal of this study was to ascertain the factors that encourage or hinder the behavior of joining the Utah Nurses' Association (UNA). A descriptive survey was used in which a questionnaire was mailed to 504 association members and 1,199 nonmembers. A response rate of 32.4% was achieved. The 'PRECEDE' (Predisposing, Reinforcing, and Enabling Causes in Educational Diagnosis and Evaluation) model was used to identify and categorize the reasons nurses join or do not join UNA. A belief that membership is beneficial and knowledge of the association and its goals and benefits (predisposing factors) were demonstrated to have a strong relationship to joining behavior. Availability of resources of time and money (enabling factors) were also found to have a strong influence on the decision to join or not join the UNA. Support of the behavior by others (reinforcing factors) were only moderately related to membership