'initial impulse for' is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe the reason or motivation behind an idea, project, or action. For example, "The initial impulse for the project was to reduce waste in the workplace."
Building more and better schools after World War II provided the initial impulse for the Cummins subsidy program.
The initial impulse for slam poetry, he acknowledged, came from his disdain for the conventional poetry readings he attended when he first began to study the craft.
Many Asia-based economists say that the I.M.F., and the Clinton Administration behind it, did not adequately understand the Asian economies and that the initial impulse for budget surpluses and high interest rates only added to the economic damage.
This "inferior position," he said, means that "the real initial impulse for developing fiber optics, telecommunications and the Internet will have to come from the equity markets up north".
In 1997 he used the silhouette of an ironing board to evoke the outline of a slave ship in his poignant woodcut "Stowage". Cole's initial impulse for "Beauties" was to create work that resembled the port where slave ships docked.
— and investigating her initial impulse for the piece, which had a lot to do with going back into the vernacular of Irish step dancing, deconstructing it, looking at it anew".
However, Wieland and his brother Wolfgang praised Appia: "... the stylised stage, inspired by the music and the realisation of three-dimensional space – constitute the initial impulses for a reform of operatic stagings which led quite logically to the 'New Bayreuth' style".
The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/12/165/prepub The authors thank Simone Kunz who suggested evaluating the excess costs of dementia care and thus gave the initial impulses for conducting our study.
The initial impulse of many, at least initially, was the latter.
The degradational response might be the initial impulse of the chondrocytes to create space in the cartilage for the new tissue that will be generated.
When something goes wrong, resist your initial impulse to look for someone to blame.
