Correlates of university nurse faculty publication productivity

The purpose of this study was to identify factors which may be important in the publication productivity of university nurse faculty. Two central research questions were addressed: 1) What relationship exists between selected professional, educational, and career variables and the publication productivity of university nurse faculty members? 2) What is the typical publication productivity profile of university nurse faculty? The population consisted of 422 full-time tenure tract nurse faculty teaching in seven nursing schools that offered baccalaureate, master's and doctoral programs and were located in public Research Universities I. All data were obtained through the use of a questionnaire. Completed questionnaires were received from 80 percent of the respondents. Faculty not meeting the criteria for the study and all instructors were eliminated from analysis. Data were ultimately analyzed for 261 subjects. Thirty-two variables were found to have a significant relationship to faculty publication productivity. Eleven of these variables (highest degree, years since first master's, age, rank, teaching responsibilities, time spent teaching, time spent in research, hours of clinical instruction, teaching and research preferences, journals received, beliefs about the desirable relationship between publication and promotion and tenure) and five motivational variables were included in a regression analysis. These 16 variables grouped into three clusters, accounted for .4845 percent of the total variation in university nurse faculty publication productivity. Current job socialization factors and motivational factors accounted for a significant amount of variation in faculty publication productivity even when highest degree, years since first master's, age, and rank were controlled.