Abstract:
The ongoing high attrition rates from pre-registration nursing programmes in the United Kingdom (Byrne 2006; RCN Scotland 2006) have long been a cause for concern, and have prompted investigation into possible causes (Glossop 2001). The research done so far has linked, amongst others, factors such as academic success, age, academic qualifications, family commitments and finances to attrition from nursing programmes. Scotland has a particularly high attrition rate (RCN Scotland 2006), and this study aims to investigate the relationships between a variety of variables and academic success. An online, quantitative, questionnaire survey of stage two and three pre-registration nursing and midwifery students was carried out. Demographic data, and data relating to academic performance and extra-curricular work was collected. Kruskall-Wallis testing was used to determine the presence of relationships between variables (Petrie and Sabin 2000). Respondents were split almost 50:50 between the over-25 and under-25 age groups. Almost half of the respondents were married or cohabiting, almost a third have children, and almost a third are the primary wage earners in their households. Academic performance in this group was better in stage one of their course than in stage two. A relationship with academic success was demonstrated with age (p=0.01), entry qualifications (p=0.047), course (p=0.031) and branch (p=0.014) in stage one, but only with age (P=0.041) in stage two. The relationships demonstrated in this study correlate with the published evidence (Glossop 2001), but further analysis and research is required, particularly as the survey had a very low response rate and the sample may not be representative of the population of interest.