Nursing students' prosocial motivation: does it predict professional commitment and involvement in the job?

This study investigated how prosocial motivation reported by nursing students in their final year of academic studies relates to career commitment and job involvement three years after graduation.

Most studies investigating nurses' prosocial motivation for choosing the nursing profession examine only their prosocial motivation for entering nursing training; they do not investigate whether this motivation is associated with job involvement or commitment to the profession.

A longitudinal survey design was used.

The present longitudinal study included 160 nurses. In their final academic year of spring 2007, the nurses received a questionnaire about their motivation for entering nursing. Three years after graduation, spring 2010, they received another questionnaire about their level of job involvement and career commitment.

The results showed that prosocial motivation measured in their last academic year was related to career commitment three years after graduation, but unrelated to job involvement.

The results indicated that prosocial motivation is important in identifying with the profession but not necessarily for personal involvement in the job. The study gives important knowledge on how a commonly reported motivation for entering nursing relates to the nurses' attitudes about their work life.