Psychological Capital of Employees of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences During 2010-2011

Abstract

Background: Psychological capital with components of hope, self efficacy, optimism, and resiliency has been recently proposed to bring positive psychology to the workplace. Objectives: We investigated Psychological Capital states of employees of the Tehran university of medical sciences (TUMS) headquarter offices in Tehran, Iran. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study was conducted among all (1260) employees of the Tehran university of medical sciences headquarter offices in Tehran, Iran during the 2010-2011 time period. They were asked to respond to the PsyCap questionnaire, consisting of four subscales include hope, optimism, self-efficacy and resilience, each comprising of six items. Data were recorded and analyzed by SPSS software, using Chi-square statistical methods. Results: Descriptive statistics showed that the mean for positive psychological capital score was 4.05 (SD = 0.43), state of hope was 4.2 (SD = 0.64), optimism was 4.03 (SD = 0.85), self-efficacy was 3.9 (SD = 0.67), and resilience was 4.06. It seems that TUMS employees score higher in hope state subscale of positive psychological capital inventory. Conclusions: The relatively upper scores on the positive psychological states may be explained by the fact that TUMS employees worked and lived under good job that more likely to be associated with higher organizational performance. This is similar to USA sample and incompatible with Chinese workers. This study finding is only a first step towards an empirical examination of PsyCap states of psychological capital in Iran. However, our findings show the potentially important role of PsyCap capacities in health care organizations in Iran.