Nursing students’ perceived value of the work environment: A discrete choice experiment

The purpose of this study was to elicit graduating undergraduate nursing students’ perceived value of the work environment in aged care. Applying a cross sectional design, an electronic questionnaire was sent to 625 graduating undergraduate nursing students from three schools of nursing in Jiangsu Province, China. A discrete choice experiment questionnaire with eight choice-set questions was performed. In total, 267 nursing students (42.7%) responded to the questionnaire. We found that nursing students valued excellent working conditions the highest (OR = 3.632 [2.846~4.635]), followed by adequate formal professional development activities (OR = 2.252 [1.907~2.660]), good/excellent safety management (OR = 2.214 [1.828~2.682])/ (OR = 2.202 [1.758~2.759]), and 10% higher earnings (OR = 1.615 [1.360~1.919]). Based on these findings, the study provided information to improve the recruitment of nursing students to work with older adults. Findings suggest that students may be 44.07~73.41% more likely to choose working with older people when valued job characteristics are present.