abstract
- The shortage of graduate-level prepared nurses is reaching critical levels. Combined with an anticipated wave of faculty retirements, a relatively older graduate student body, and an insufficient number of graduates at the Masters' and doctoral levels, the recruitment of more and younger students into graduate programs in nursing has become a priority for the profession. Current understanding of why undergraduate nursing students choose to pursue graduate studies in nursing remains vague. A non-experimental descriptive correlational study was designed and 87 useable surveys were collected from fourth-year baccalaureate nursing students at a large South-Western Ontario University (response rate = 67%). The influence of student valuation of graduate studies and self-efficacy (SE) for graduate studies on student intention to pursue graduate studies in nursing was clearly demonstrated with this study (R(2) = .52). Implications for nursing education include working towards undergraduate curricula that enhance students' valuation of and SE for graduate studies in nursing.