Variables that were found to differ between nurseswho contributed and who did not contribute open-endedresponses included the following: age, years since initiallicense, level of religiosity, amount of SU, education, cur-rent nursing position, job status, nursing positions held inpast year, and hours worked per week. Of note is the sig-nificant difference between the two subsamples on ACEscores (Felitti et al., 1998) with those contributingresponses reporting higher ACEs (p < .01)
Regarding the question "What are the study variable(s)?": Because this wasn't a controlled study, there are not independent or dependent variables. That said, there was some variability found between the nurses that decided to answer the open-ended responses, and those that didn't