This report provides data describing the nursing population as determined by the second national sample survey of registered nurses. A brief introduction is followed by a chapter that presents an overview of the survey methodology, including details on the sampling design, the response rate, and the statistical reliability. Chapter 3 provides a summary of the findings from data on 30,375 nurses who represent an 80 percent response rate. Data are relative to the status of nurses as of November 1980. In chapter 4 the registered nursing population is described in terms of demographic characteristics, educational background, employment status of nurses employed in nursing, and characteristics of nurses not employed as nurses. Each section contains a discussion of the topic with textual exhibits and a set of related tables in the back of the section. Appendixes include the questionnaire, information on statistical methods, information on the reliability of sample estimates and calculation of generalized variances, and tables of sampling errors of selected statistics calculated through direct methods. (YLB)