Cm. Wright et al., SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUNG AND MATURE AGED NURSING-STUDENTS IN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES, Nurse education today, 18(2), 1998, pp. 101-107
This national study compares the social and demographic characteristic
s of direct and delay entry students in a control group of 1551 studen
ts in higher education programmes in 1987 and 1990 with the national s
tudy group of 2295 students sampled in 1995. Using a specially constru
cted socioeconomic variable for comparison the analyses demonstrated a
significant difference in the socioeconomic level of the household fo
r the younger aged group but not for the mature aged group. There was
also a significant difference between males and females in their age o
f entry patterns. Furthermore, there was a significant difference in t
he location of school attended for most of their secondary education f
or the younger aged group but not for the mature aged group. For both
groups there was a significant difference in the number of siblings, t
he level of education attained by the mother and the income received b
y the mother in the households of the control and study groups. Legit
analysis revealed that there was a significant interaction between the
household variables: socioeconomic status, number of siblings, and in
come received by the mother of the respondents in the control and stud
y groups for the younger age group but not for the mature age group. T
his interaction for the younger age group, plus the finding that nursi
ng students were more likely to delay their Higher Education Contribut
ion Scheme (HECS) payment than other university students suggests that
politicians need to take great care in any changes to current HECS pa
yments as such changes could upset the delicate social balance that ha
s been achieved in nursing recruitment in Australia.