Autonomous and controlled motivation of first-year nursing students – Differences between “traditional” and “second career” students

In France, 10% of students define nursing education as their first choice of career. However, due to the limited number of spots in nursing schools, only one third of them will access these studies. This popularity exists in spite of nursing work conditions (night shifts, variable hours, nurses short-supply). Hence, this paper aims to document the motivations of students to enroll in nursing schools through the lense of the self-determination theory, as well as the achievement goals of the students (mastery and performance). Moreover, nursing schools welcome a significant portion of "second-career students" for which demographic and motivational differences compared to their "initial training students" peers have been previously documented. A cross-sectionnal survey method is presented with a sample of 538 first-year nursing students (85.3% female), including 102 second-career students. The survey includes two instruments: the Academic Motivation scale (Vallerand et al., 1989) and the Achievement goals scale (Darnon & Butera, 2005). Internal consistency of the scale and Confirmatory factor analyses have been conducted. Descriptive analyses are presented.