Nurse Political Participation: an in Depth View and Comparison with Women Teachers and Engineers.

Abstract

Nurses are a professional group unique in their female predominance, male domination, and political context. This study therefore explored the politically related attitudes and behaviors of female RN's in comparison with female teachers and engineers. Nurses were expected to have lower participation rates because of their occupational sex segregation and institutionalization of the female role. Verba and Nie's (1972) political participation model, wherein structural and attitudinal factors intervene on background factors to shape political behavior, provided the theoretical framework. Recent work by Gurin and Miller (1980) identified group consciousness as an important predictor of political behavior in national samples, while Klein (1981) identified the importance of consciousness in women's political mobilization. A mail survey was designed using r and om samples from professional organizations in southeastern Michigan, yielding 450 nurses (Michigan Nurses Association) and 100 teachers (Michigan Education Association). A convenience sample of 97 members of the Society of Women Engineers was used. The questionnaire was developed from items used in the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies' 1976 National and Post-Election Studies, and 1979 Study on Women's Attitudes. Other items were modified from Verba and Nie's 1967 National Survey and Cataldo et al's 1967 Buffalo Survey (Milbrath, 1976). Construct validity and retest reliability was demonstrated. A 60% response rate was achieved. The study explored for differences on demographic and background variables; differences in political participation measures of voting, campaigning, communal, and protest activities; the relationship of predictor variable sets to participation; and factors significantly related to the participation modes for nurses. Factor analysis was used to identify four modes of political behavior. Statistical analyses included frequency distribution, bivariate relationships, and rho correlation. Significant variables were placed in regression models to identify the most parsimonious equations for each mode of nurses' participation. Controlling for level of higher education, there was no significant difference in political participation among the three groups. Occupational sex segregation, therefore had no direct effect on participation. Indirectly, however, it was related to nurses lower levels of higher education. Organization activity accounted for half the variance explained by the overall participation equation.