Nursing is a vital career as it involves taking care of people. There are a number of paths on can take to become a nurse. The two most famous paths are through an associate degree in nursing program (ADN) or a bachelor’s degree program (BSN). In both cases, the paths lead to one being a registered nurse. There are many differences that distinguish the two. The time required to complete the two is perhaps the most pertinent since a BSN takes 4 years to complete while an ADN only requires only 2 years (Nursing licensure, 2019). However, analysis of the differences between the two paths will not be discussed here. In this paper, average annual salary of BSN is analyzed and compared to the average annual income salary for households in different states.
Descriptive Statistics
The data for the salaries is obtained from the bureau of labor statistics. Random sampling is done based on alphabetical order to come up with a sample of salaries for 10 states. The average annual income salary for the 10 states is obtained from Data USA. The descriptive statistics for each data set is calculated and found to be as follows. The average value for the annual mean wage in the 10 states is
while the average value for the general mean income in the 10 states is
. The median, on the other hand, is
for the annual mean wage while it is
for the general mean income for the 10 states. There is no mode in the sample in both cases. Lastly, the standard deviation for the annual mean wage is
while the standard deviation for the general mean income in the selected states is
.
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Graphs
The graphs that were developed in this paper are the Scatter plot and the Box plot shown below.
The scatter plot indicates that there is a positive linear correlation between the two data sets. Moreover, there are no outliers in both cases.
The box plot serves to confirm that the descriptive statistics. In the BSN annual it indicates that there are outliers at
and between
and
. Moreover, the box plots also confirm the median values for each case. That is just under $70,000 for the BSN mean annual wage and between $50,000 and $60,000 for the general annual mean wage. Essentially, this two confirm the values found in the descriptive statistics section.
Correlation and Regression
Using the data analysis tool on excel to find the regression of the two variables. From the regression analysis, we can find the correlation coefficient which in this case is
. This confirms that there is strong positive linear correlation between the two variables. Moreover, it also shows the gradient and the intercepts of the regression model. From the table shown above the intercept is
and the gradient is
. The p-value indicates that both values are significant in determining the BSN annual average income.
Hypothesis testing
In this paper, we are investigating whether there is a difference between the BSN’s annual average income and the general average income for households. Therefore, since there are two data sets, we use the t-test. The null hypothesis in this case, is that there is no statistically significant difference between the means of the two samples while the alternate hypothesis which is also the research hypothesis states that there is a difference between the two means. The BSN’s average annual income is sample 1 while the general annual income is sample 2. To find the critical value I used an alpha of
and degrees of freedom as
. Therefore, the t-critical value is
. Using the TTEST function on excel I got the t-value as
. Therefore, since the t-value is less than the t-critical value, we fail to reject the null hypothesis.
Conclusion
The hypothesis test indicates that there is no statistically significant difference between the BSN’s annual average income and the general annual average income of households in different states. However, there is a strong positive linear relationship between the two variables, indicating that the annual average annual income of individual income strongly determines the BSN’s annual average income in different states. The weaknesses of this study however, is that it assumes that each household has one breadwinner which may not be the case. Further, research could be done to determine the disparity between the salaries of different medical professions in different states ("The Wage Gap in Medicine: What We Know", 2019).
References
ADN vs BSN | The Difference Between the ADN and BSN. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.nursinglicensure.org/articles/adn-vs-bsn.html
USA, D. (2019). Data USA. Retrieved from
https://datausa.io/
The Wage Gap in Medicine: What We Know. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.wimlf.org/news/post/37
Labor, B. (2004). Registered Nurses. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291141.htm#ind
