The effects of participating in nursing student congress and other motivation sources on occupational motivation states of Nursing students: Toros University example

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of participation in nursing student congresses and other motivation sources on students’ occupational motivation states. METHODS: This descriptive pilot study covers 29 students who are studying in nursing department. The answers given to the “Motivation’s Resources and Problems Scale” (MRPS) were evaluated with Mann-Whitney U (MWU) test which is one of the non-parametric tests. RESULTS: The mean age of participants was 19.2±0.9 years. There was no significant difference between the students who participated and those who did not participate in MRPS total scores. However, even though the difference was not significant, medical vocational high school students’ internal motivation levels were found to be higher than the other school graduates. CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant difference between the ranking of the scores that are acquired from motivation scale and participation status of nursing student in the congress. On the other hand, there are other factors that motivate occupational learning of students. Planning studies about increasing nursing students’ positive motivation sources is suggested.