Factors affecting nurses' decisions to join their professional association

Many nursing associations in the world are facing difficulties in increasing nurses' membership. Many researchers have identified possible causes for this decline.

To explore factors that influence nurses' decision to join or not to join the Kuwait Nursing Association (KNA).

A Professional Association Membership Questionnaire (PAMQ) developed by Yeager (1981) was used. A short demographic questionnaire and two open-ended questions developed by the researcher were added at the end of the questionnaire to gather the data sought in this study. The participants were 40 nurses who are current members of KNA and 100 nurses who had been members of KNA in the past and did not renew their membership in 2005.

This study showed that all 29 reported benefits were not very important to both groups. However, nine benefits strongly influenced the current members' decisions to join KNA, namely social activities, relief from boredom, fun, travel, improvement of health care, Something new, friendship, group benefit plans and peer group contact. The former members valued five benefits, namely education, programmes, support, professionalism and self-improvement.

Current and former members differ in their reasons to join or not to join the KNA. All the benefits provided by an association may not necessarily attract members and the philosophical differences between them are one of the reasons not join an association.