Similarities and Differences in Human Values between Nurses in Four Countries

Abstract

Data on human values were collected from 1410 nurses from Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Multivariate analysis of covariance, using the mean rating of all 57 individual values, sex, marital status, and age as the covariates, showed significant differences between countries on the 10 value types. However, the variance accounted for by country on each of these values was small. A plot of the adjusted mean scores of each country on each value type, as well as Spearman rho correlations between countries on the 10 value types show that nurses tend to have similar value type profiles across countries. Because years of experience in nursing do not seem to affect these correlations, we presume that nursing attracts people with personal values that are more similar to each other than different across countries, much like the homogenization process that takes place in organizations.