Abstract:
The retention of nursing faculty is a growing concern in the United States and a major challenge for the nursing profession. The purpose of this study was to examine the causal effects among the variables mentoring, job stress, incivility, organizational commitment, and occupational commitment on nursing faculty job satisfaction and intent to stay in academia. A structural equation model was generated and tested to examine the relationships among variables and to identify the direct effects, indirect effects, and total effects on job satisfaction and intent to stay in academia.
The sample consisted of 118 associate degree nursing faculty in the state of Georgia who were primarily female, Caucasian, master’s prepared, and employed full-time in academia. Nursing faculty responded to the 87-item Nursing Faculty Job Satisfaction Questionnaire which was created from six previously validated instruments. The Pearson’s correlations among variables were positive and moderately correlated except for the variables of job stress and incivility which were negative and moderately correlated with the other variables. Occupational commitment and organizational commitment had the strongest, positive correlations with job satisfaction and intent to stay. Incivility had the smallest correlation with intent to stay, whereas mentoring had the smallest correlation with job satisfaction. In the final path model, the variables organizational commitment, job stress and occupational commitment were the strongest predictors of job satisfaction. The variables occupational commitment, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction were the strongest predictors of nursing faculty intent to stay in academia.