Paper
Friday, July 23, 2004
This presentation is part of : Theory Development
Empirical Testing of King's Theory of Goal Attainment Focusing on the Relationship Between Role Conflict and Stress of Nurses in Interactions With Patients
Tomomi Kameoka, RN, DNSc, Nursing Education, National College of Nursing Japan, Kiyose, Tokyo, Japan, Naomi Funashima, RN, DNSc, School of Nursing, Chiba University, Chiba, Chiba, Japan, and Midori Sugimori, RN, BLL, Gunma Prefectural College of Health Science, Gunma Prefectural College of Health Science, Maebashi, Gunma, Japan.
Learning Objective #1: Discuss the procedure of empirical testing of nursing theory
Learning Objective #2: Describe the relationships among role conflict, stress, and attributes of nurses based on King's Theory of Goal Attainment
OBJECTIVES: 1. To test empirically a proposition of the King's Theory of Goal Attainment. The proposition is "If role conflict is experienced by nurse or client or both, stress in nurse-client interactions will occur." 2. To investigate the relationships among the attributes of nurses, role conflict and stress in interactions with patients.

DESIGN: Correlational Research Design

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: Theoretical framework of the study was constructed using the theoretical substruction procedure, and it included the hypothesis, "The higher the nurse perceives role conflict, the higher she perceives stress in interactions with patients."

METHODS: 1,400 nurses in Japan were asked to answer the instruments, which were the Japanese version of Role Conflict and Ambiguity Scale (J-RCAS), the Japanese version of Nursing Stress Scale (J-NSS), the Erickson Psychosocial Stage Inventory (EPSI) and Questionnaire for Nurse's Attributes (QNA). The data were analyzed statistically.

FINDINGS & CONCLUSIONS: 1,057(75.5%) nurses returned their answers by mail, and 535 valid responses were analyzed. The result indicated that there was a significant correlation between the score of J-RCAS and that of J-NSS (r=.423, p<.001), thus the research hypothesis was accepted. This suggested that the proposition of the King's Theory was adequate empirically. The result of the exploration of the attributes of nurses related to role conflict and stress identified four attributes among 14 examined in this study. The four attributes were age, psychosocial development, having a mentor in one's ward, and having the intention to continue working as a nurse (p<.05). A path analysis was conducted on the six variables, which were, role conflict, stress, and the four attributes of nurses. The result showed that having a mentor in one's ward, psychosocial development, and stress in interactions with patient influenced on role conflict of nurses, and role conflict influenced on the intention to continue working as a nurse (p<.001).

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