THE HIDDEN SELECTION OF THE OCCUPATIONAL APPEAL: THE PARADIGM OF NURSES

Traditionally, the process of choosing a vocation has been presented as the matching of a person's interests and aptitudes with occupational requirements. Maintaining the individual's role as an agent in the process of "self-selection into an occupation" (Krech, Crutchfield and Ballachey, 1962), one ought to give attention not only to the push- but also to the pull- factors, i.e. to the occupational appeal which embodies the occupation's motivational "valence" (to use the term coined for a social context by Lewin, Dembo, Festinger and Sears, 1944).