title: Nursing students' prosocial motivation: does it predict professional commitment and involvement in the job?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  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.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  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.
  
  
  METHODS
  A longitudinal survey design was used.
  
  
  METHODS
  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.
  
  
  RESULTS
  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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Study of Professions, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway.
authors.forename: Kjersti
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nesje
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D009042:Motivation; D013338:Students, Nursing
keywords: altruism; career commitment; education; job involvement; nursing; prosocial motivation; students