Researching career plans and career histories of mental health nurses Original Research Article

The project design is a panel study in which questionnaires have been sent at regular intervals to RMNs who qualified between January 1993 and March 1994 in all colleges of nursing in four purposively selected English Regional Health Authorities. The cohort included those who took the three year direct entry training for psychiatric nursing and all those who took a shortened course, having previously qualified for another part of the nursing register. The focus of this article is the first phase of data collection which took place at qualification. This first phase comprised a cross-sectional survey in its own right. However it was also the baseline for a longitudinal study and so the methods adopted for this phase were those for establishing and maintaining a study group over time, and not those for a one off crosssectional study. Reasons for choosing a longitudinal design and the methods adopted are briefly outlined here; a fuller account is available in Robinson et al., 1996.