A test of Cohen's developmental model for professional socialization with baccalaureate nursing students

The study was designed to test the Cohen (1981) model of professional socialization, which proposes that nursing students progress through four developmental stages of unilateral dependence, negative/independence, dependence/ mutuality, and interdependence as they advance through an educational program. The Professional Socialization Staging Scale (PS3), consisting of four subscale scores representative of the stages, was administered to 422 students enrolled in eight clinical nursing courses. Instrument revision was accomplished using a cross-validation design, and the study hypotheses were tested with 214 subjects in the cross-validation subsample. Significant findings (p less than .05) were the beginning students were more dependent than were graduating students, that older students were less dependent and more highly interdependent than were younger students, and that students with concurrent work experience in nursing-related fields were more highly interdependent than were students without concurrent work experience. With all groups of students evidencing the interdependence stage, no relationship was found between the sequential developmental stages and level of enrollment. Thus results of the study failed to support the Cohen model (McCain, 1984).