The project is based on the thesis that disillusionment, burnout, and/or job abandonment are best understood by delineating the pressures that accompany the role of the nurse in the health care system. Specifically, the study will explore the problem of nursing role definition by isolating role expectations (both expectations held by the nurse and those held by significant others in the nurse's work setting) that account for role conflict. In addition, the study will examine the extent to which certain personal attributes of the nurse-demographic, personality, or experiential characteristics--moderate the perceptions and effects of role conflict. Groups of registered nurses in hospital staff positions, nursing administrators, physicians, patients, and members of patients' families will be asked to complete a behavioral expectations inventory designed to obtain ratings of importance for an array of nurse behaviors. Staff nurse participants will also be asked to complete a demograhic data sheet and measures of selected personality traits, socio-emotional and instrumental support, perceived role conflict, and burnout. Finally, nurses' immediate supervisors will be asked to provide ratings of the nurses' performance on the job. Factor analytic procedures will be used to identify the patterns of relationships among the importance ratings of behavioral expectations for each participant group. Further comparisons among the factor structures for each group will document the sources of role conflict. Thus, the data will reveal not only how nurses perceive their role and how others perceive that role, but also the inconsistencies or contradictions among the different viewpoints. Correlational or t-test procedures, as appropriate, will next be used to determine whether nurses' perceptions of role conflict vary as a function of the demographic, personality, or support variables. In addition, multiple regression will be employed to determine if the relationships between perceived role conflict and burnout, and between perceived role conflict and job performance, are moderated by one or more of the personal attribute variables.
