An exploration of the finding and seeking of meaning in the life and the Mexican-American nurse's mood state

Date

1980-12

Authors

Floyd, Gloria Jo Wade

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Abstract

The literature documents increasing concern about nurses' personal and professional life situations related to stress, frustrations, concerns and problems. An exploratory design was used to ascertain the relationship between the finding and the seeking of meaning in life and the nurse's mood state. One hundred and four Mexican-American, women, registered nurses, from a metropolitan area with a resident population approaching one million, participated in the study. A mailed instrument was employed and participants were asked to respond to three scales: The Purpose in Life Test (PIL), The Seeking of Noetic Goals (SONG) and The Profile of Mood States (POMS), which measures tension-anxiety, depression-dejection, anger-hostility, confusion-bewilderment, fatigue-inertia and vigor-vitality. Data were analyzed using descriptive and Pearson r Correlation statistics. It was concluded that there is a statistically significant relationship between the finding and the seeking of meaning in life and the mood states of: (1) vigor-vitality, (2) tension-anxiety, (3) confusion-bewilderment, (4) depression- dejection, (5) fatigue-inertia and (6) anger-hostility. These latter relationships were either slight, moderate or marked in terms of predictability value.

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Keywords

Health and environmental sciences

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