Employment decisions of NMC registered nurses in the UK

Skatun, Diane (2016). Employment decisions of NMC registered nurses in the UK. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852274

Data description (abstract)

This study considered the employment characteristics and decisions of individuals who were registered nurses with the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Registration is valid for a period of three years and individuals currently registered and sampled could be one of three categories; they can be currently working as nurses, they can be employed in an alternative occupation or they can be out of the labour force. The survey intended to collect additional information on employment characteristics to that which are found in a more general labour/employment survey such as the labour force survey. This was done in the context of the nursing occupation to investigate if more detailed information on employment characteristics can increase understanding on individual employment decisions.
The survey asked detailed questions on current employment including detailed and specific questions on their current nursing job and, for those who were not currently in nursing, questions on previous nursing employment. Questions on respondents’ job satisfaction were included including satisfaction with respect to three aspects of patient care. Questions were also asked on intentions to leave their current nursing job, move within nursing jobs, return to nursing or a non-nursing job (if not currently in nursing).
The survey also included a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) which is a stated preference survey instrument where respondents are asked to choose between hypothetical jobs. The DCE methodology is a useful technique to elicit both strength of preferences and variations in preferences across different sub-groups of individuals where there might not be enough variation in revealed preference data. In this survey the technique was used to elicit underlying trade-offs between pecuniary and non-pecuniary job characteristics of nursing employment.

Data creators:

Creator Name	Affiliation	ORCID (as URL)
Skatun Diane	University of Aberdeen

Sponsors:

Economic and Social Research Council

Grant reference:

RES-000-23-1240

Topic classification:

Economics
Labour and employment

Keywords:

nursing profession, employment

Project title:

Nurse labor Markets: Preferences for pecuniary and non-pecuniary rewards

Grant holders:

Dr. Diane Skatun

Project dates:

From	To
1 December 2005	31 March 2009

Date published:

21 Apr 2016 12:31

Last modified:

21 Apr 2016 12:31

Coverage and Methodology

Collection period:

Date from:	Date to:
1 December 2005	31 March 2009

Country:

United Kingdom

Data collection method:

Data is at individual level for NMC registered nurses. Raw data comprises of [N=2077 nurses in nursing employment] and [N=340 nurses not currently in nursing].
Data was from a postal survey. Respondents were recruited through an insert placed in the Nursing and Midwifery Council in-house magazine. Inserts were placed at random blocks within the magazine run. The magazine run was printed by post-code. This was done over 2 separate magazine runs in October 2007 and January 2008. 64,000 inserts were placed in total (10% of the magazine run) inviting individuals to get in touch to be part of the study. An accompanying advert in the magazine also invited those without an insert to use a web-based survey to join the survey. This web survey was a reduced version of the paper survey (as advised by our web-survey team). There were 2 alternative paper questionnaires depending on whether individuals responded to recruitment as currently in nursing or not. Due to the nature of the discrete choice experiment, 2 versions of the DCE section of the survey were integrated into the main body of the survey. This means there are in total 4 different surveys (2 employment groups- nursing and out of nursing, and 2 versions of the DCE within each sub-group).

Observation unit:

Individual

Kind of data:

Numeric, Text

Type of data:

Qualitative and mixed methods data, UK survey data

Resource language:

English

Access and Administration

Data sourcing, processing and preparation:

Of the individuals who requested to be part of the survey (2225 employed in nursing, and 348 not currently in nursing), the raw number of respondents who returned surveys which were to some extent completed were [n=2077 nurses in nursing employment] and [n=340 nurses not currently in nursing]. It should be noted that after further restriction on data quality that were subjective in terms of missing variables that were deemed crucial, the working data we used were [n=2005 registered nurses in nursing] and [n=297 registered nurses not in nursing employment]. There are 174 questions/variables in the survey for those in nursing and 175 variables in the survey for those who are not currently in nursing. Data-files are currently password protected as they currently hold the full post-code of those who responded. There are an additional 2 small separate files which provide the levels and attributes that are merged into the data-set by experiment number for the discrete choice experiment element of the study. Respondents were assured that individual responses to the questionnaire would be anonymous and that at no stage will any individual or their employer be identifiable. This was due to the extensive questions on employment settings some of which are very specialised and with geographical location and other demographic information could potentially distinguish individuals. Respondents were assured that names and address would not be disclosed to any third party. As stated above, the mapping of post-codes to Government office regions could be undertaken for the whole sample and the full post-codes withheld. However even with large geographical regions, the extensive questions on employment settings some of which are very specialised (including specialised children’s services) along with other demographic information, there is the potential that individuals might be identified. A thorough count of cell sizes by these specialized locations would need to be undertaken to ensure there is no disclosure possibilities. Missing values/ withheld information would then have to be inserted into those variable cells.

Rights owners: