Determination of Personality Characteristics and Leadership Orientation of Nursing and Midwifery Students

INTRODUCTION: In this study, it was aimed to determine the personality characteristics and leadership orientations of the nursing and midwifery students.

METHODS: The sample of this cross-sectional study consisted of 457 nursing and midwifery students studying at the faculty of health sciences of a university between April and June in 2019. The data of the study was collected using the “Socio-Demographic Characteristics Form of the Individual”, “Bortner Self-Rating Scale Short Form” and “Leadership Orientation Scale”. Independent t-test and one-way ANOVA tests were used to analyze the data.
RESULTS: Of the students, 66.9% were nursing, 81.2% were female and the mean age was 20.66 ± 1.84 years. 79.8% of the students are graduated from anatolian high school. 59.7% of the students show A type personality. There was no significant difference in terms of leadership orientations according to the age, parents’ education status, department, place of residence and economic status. It was found that leadership orientations showed significant differences according to gender, personality type and degree of students’ class variables. When the students with A type personality exhibited human oriented, structure oriented and symbolic leadership orientations, male students showed structure oriented, political and symbolic leadership orientations towards more than women.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: As a result, more than half of the students have A type personality types and students with A type personality traits have higher leadership orientation scores. When the personality types differ according to the academic grade point average of the students, leadership orientations differ according to gender, personality type and class.