Nursing Outlook
Volume 54, Issue 1 , Page 7, January 2006

Letter to the Editor

  • Lee hu Zysberg, PhD

      Affiliations

    • University of Haifa, Department of Psychology, Haifa, Israel
    • ,
  • Devon M. Berry, PhD

      Affiliations

    • University of Cincinnati, OH

Article Outline

 

To the editor:

We thank Ms. Dean for her valuable comments regarding the article “Gender and Students’ Vocational Choices in Entering the Field of Nursing.” Indeed, she does have a point in saying the unbalanced samples may have biased the study results and could have undermined their accuracy (as in external validity). The study was a semi-exploratory, preliminary study and, as such, its value is mainly in pointing out a direction for future research rather than providing conclusive evidence.

However, the disparities noted in the sample sizes are actually not as severe a problem as they might seem, for 2 reasons:

1.Given the gender disparities in the nursing arena (where men constitute a mere 6% or so of the workforce in the USA), the sample is actually more or less representative of the population from which it is extracted. Correcting for it by over-sampling men might have actually undermined the external validity of the findings.

2.Uneven samples usually undermine the power of the statistical tests used (ie, reduce their ability to identify effects). The fact that the differences were found even in such uneven samples actually lends more credibility to them. Of course, in larger samples, we may have been able to identify additional differences beyond those found in our study. This is left to be examined in future research in this line of work.

We are excited to hear from such perceptive, mindful critical readers such as Ms. Dean and congratulate Nursing Outlook for providing a stage for such discussions and dialogues.

PII: S0029-6554(05)00229-0

doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2005.10.004

Nursing Outlook
Volume 54, Issue 1 , Page 7, January 2006

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