Factors Influencing Intent to Stay in Academia for Nursing Faculty in the Southern United States of America

Abstract

The current nursing faculty shortage makes understanding intent to stay in academia a step toward slowing the exodus of faculty. The purpose of this study was to discover a parsimonious set of predictor variables from the variables of job satisfaction, mentoring, organizational commitment, and leadership behaviors for intent to stay in nursing education. A random cluster sample consisted of 39 schools of nursing in states within the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). There were 316 responses from 782 potential participants for a response rate of 40.4%. Stepwise multiple regression results indicated that organizational commitment explained 19.7% of the variance in intent to stay one year and 21.2% of the variance in intent to stay five years. Further, mentored faculty scored significantly higher on organizational commitment. Intent to stay three years was not significantly correlated to any predictor variables suggesting it is a time to intervene to influence decisions to stay.