Exploration of Personality Traits of
Family Nurse Practitioner Students
Kaye
Bultemeier & Dustin Wattenberger
Abstract
Background: Understanding personality types have
been an unwavering desire for professionals making career choices. Online education of Family Nurse
Practitioners is expanding rapidly.
Studies have been conducted concerning learning styles of students and
performance in online and on-campus education.
Few studies have been conducted that examined the personality types of
Family Nurse Practitioners. Objective:
To examine the personality types of students entering online and on-campus
Family Nurse Practitioner programs.
Methodology: Exploratory descriptive cross-sectional design. Sample 109 entering FNP students (50 online
and 59 on-campus). Instrument Form M of
Myers Briggs Personality Inventory administered anonymously online.
Results: Significant differences in Sensing versus Intuition and Judging
versus Perceiving types were found across cohorts. No significant difference
were found between online and on-campus cohorts. Highest composite indexes were Introvert,
Sensing, Feeling, Judging and Extrovert, Sensing, Feeling, Judging.
Conclusions: Further research on personality types of FNP students and
practicing FNPs is needed to determine which students would be best fitted for
the FNP curriculum.
P |
ersonality
type is defined as the dominant type that emerges after being administered the
Myers/Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI). The Myers-Briggs is an instrument designed
to measure psychological preferences. Myers reported that personality types
varied with career selection. Limited explorations of personality types
of nurses, and specifically advanced practice nurses, have been conducted.
Family nurse practitioners
(FNP) are emerging as a profession created to expand patients’ access to health
care, with over 9,000 graduates in 2010.
Few studies have examined personality types of FNPs. Education programs
for FNPs are rapidly expanding to an online format. This is consistent with The
Chronicle of Higher Education (2009) projection of increasing online
enrollments that states by 2020 over 60 percent of students will be taking all
of their classes online. Knowles’ Model
of Adult Learning provides the framework for examining individual student
characteristics and understanding how they impact the education process.
No research was found that examined differences
in the personalities of online versus on-campus FNP students.
The purpose of this study was to examine the
personality types of students entering a FNP program and to further examine
differences of those enrolled in online versus on-campus education. Two
research questions directed this study:
1. What
are the personality types of students that enter Family Nurse Practitioner
Education programs?
2. Is
there a difference in personality types of FNP students who are enrolled in
online versus on- campus education programs?
Methods
Study Design: Exploratory descriptive cross-sectional design.
Sample: A pilot study of 109 FNP students (50 online and 59 on-campus).
Subjects were recruited using convenience sampling of all new entrants into the
two educational programs.
Setting: On-campus- A private university in the southern United
States.
Online- A private university in the northeast region of the United
States
All students formally enrolled in the FNP program at either of the
two sites were recruited.
Data Collection
IRB approval was
obtained from both institutions. Participants were approached in their online
or on-campus classroom and asked to complete the inventory. They were
instructed to proceed to a web link to complete the MBTI Form M. The students
anonymously completed the personality questionnaire. Consent was implied by the
completion of the survey. Brief demographic data including age and gender was collected.
The questionnaire
consists of 93 questions and took an estimated 15 minutes to complete. MBTI form
“M” contains four pairs of preferences or dichotomies, which include the
following: Extroversion (E)/Introversion (I); Sensing (S)/Intuition (N);
Thinking (T)/ Feeling (F); Judgment (J)/Perception (P). There are 16 type
combinations created from the dichotomies. The reliability of the instrument
varies from 75-90% for personality type in repeated measures and has been
reported to be good across age and ethnic groups (Lawrence & Martin, n.d.).
The validity of the instrument has been studied extensively and has been deemed
valid for the four scales, for the preference pair’s dichotomies, and for
combinations of preferences.
Data Analysis
Age, gender,
trait information and personality trait profile results were downloaded from
the Myers/Briggs website and loaded into SPSS version 16. Frequency
distributions were run on all variables. Chi Square statistics were computed
for personality types and composite types. Additionally, chi square analysis of
differences between online and on-campus cohorts was obtained. A t-test for
differences in age of the two cohorts was calculated.
Results
A total of 109 participants with a mean age of 31.7 (online) and
33.29 (on-campus). There was no statistical difference between the ages of the
two cohorts. Twenty males (7 on-campus, 13 online) and 79 females (42 on-campus,
37 online) comprised the study population.
Results indicate (Table 1) a significant number of total FNP students were
“sensing” over “intuition” sub-type. Total FNP students were “judging” versus
“perceiving” sub-type. Both were statistically significant for the overall
sample. Figure 1 illustrates that the most common composite
personality types are Introvert, Sensing, Feeling Judging (ISFJ)(n=18),
Extrovert, Sensing, Feeling, Judging (ESFJ, n=19)), Introvert, Sensing,
Thinking, Judging (ISTJ, n=14), and Extrovert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging
(ESTJ, n=12). There were inadequate numbers to calculate Chi Square statistics
between composite types. However, there
was a larger number of Introvert, Sensing,Thinking, and Perceiving (ISTP) in
the online(n=7) versus on-campus (n=2) students.
Table 1: Chi Square of Personality Sub-types *=p<.
05, n=109
|
Results: |
Cohort Online |
Cohort On-campus |
Total FNP Students |
Significance Total |
|
Extrovert Introvert |
27 23 |
32 27 |
59 50 |
.444 |
|
Sensing Intuition |
38 12 |
43 16 |
81 28 |
*. 000 |
|
Thinking Feeling |
22 28 |
24 35 |
46 63 |
.125 |
|
Judging Perceiving |
34 16 |
34 25 |
68 41 |
*. 013 |
Figure 1: Type
Composite of Online and On-Campus Students n=109
Conclusion
The results of
this pilot study indicate a predominantly “judging” personality type across
both cohorts of FNP students. The MBTI suggests that “judging” types prefer a
world that is logical. The type indicator is frequently used in career
counseling and professional development. The study results support
the findings of Bean (1995) who reported that Adult Nurse Practitioners (ANP) were
“sensing,” 56%, and “judging,” 86%.
The
results of this study indicate a significant sub-type of “sensing” versus “intuition”.
The tendency toward “sensing”
versus “intuition” of the FNP students emerged from this pilot study. Durham
(2009) reported that results from using the MBTI indicate that “perceiving”
nurses and “sensing” nurses preferred simulation over “intuitive” nurses.
The
results of this study indicate that ISFJ, ESFJ, ISTJ, and ESTJ were the most
common composite types. In a study conducted by Busen & Jones (1995),
researchers examined personality types of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PNP)
students using the MBTI. Although there were only 21 participants, the study
showed that 67% of participants had either “sensing/feeling” or “intuitive/feeling”
preferences” (Busen & Jones, 1995). This is consistent with the results of
this study which found that the FNP students were predominately “sensing” In
another study that examined thirteen FNP students’ personality types, the
majority of participants scored in the ESTJ category on the MBTI (Kelly,
1998). This agrees with the results of
this study which found ESTJ to be one of the more common composite types. Lastly,
in a study conducted by Bean (1995), researchers examined the personalities of
Adult Nurse Practitioners (ANPs).
Limitations of
this study include the small sample size and data limited to two universities. Further
research on personality types of FNP students is needed to determine if true
differences exist between online and on-campus FNP students. Bayram, Deniz,
& Erdogan (2008) reported
that personality types explain 53% of academic achievement and 52% of
attitudes. Harrington and Loffredo (2010) examined personality type and
preference for online versus on-campus instruction of 166 female college
students using the MBTI to determine their preferred learning style. They
report that “perceiving” types prefer on-campus classes, prefer learning
through listening, and desire to gauge the emotional reactions of others
(Harrington & Loffredo, 2010). These studies indicate that there may be
differences, however, we do not know if that exists for FNP students. Therefore
more extensive studies of personality types of students in FNP programs are
needed to expand the understanding of and meet the needs of FNP students.
Additional research is needed to determine the personality types of graduate
FNPs to see if the entering students are similar to the currently practicing
professionals.
About
the Author: Kaye Bultemeier PhD
FNP/BC is Associate Professor of Nursing at Lincoln Memorial University,
Harrogate, Tennessee. Contact Dr. Bultemeier at Kaye.Bultemeier@lmunet.edu; Dustin Wattenberger MSN
also of Lincoln Memorial University may be contacted at Dustin.Wattenberger@lmunet.edu.
Key Words: Myers Briggs, Family Nurse Practitioner,
Online Education
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