Abstract
BackgroundCollege teachers in China are confronted with a lot of pressure from teaching, researching and living. They are suffering from impaired physical and mental health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between organizational behavior factors and college teachers’ health related quality of life (HRQOL), and to confirm whether they are positive resources for improving teachers’ HRQOL.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted in Shenyang, China, from January to April 2014. Participants were composed of 965 teachers randomly selected from five representative colleges in Shenyang. Self-administrated questionnaires containing the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), the Chinese version Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ), and scales assessing group identification, POS, and psychological empowerment were used to measure HRQOL and organizational behavior variables of college teachers. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis (HMR) was performed to explore the effects of organizational behavior variables on college teachers’ HRQOL.ResultsThe mean (SD) scores of physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) among college teachers were 71.43 (14.70) and 65.46 (16.55) respectively in the study population. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that group identification (β = 0.121, P < 0.001) and PsyCap (β = 0.336, P < 0.001) were significant predictors of PCS, while group identification (β = 0.107, P < 0.001), POS (β = 0.124, P = 0.003), psychological empowerment (β = 0.093, P = 0.017) and PsyCap (β = 0.421, P < 0.001) were significant predictors of MCS.ConclusionChinese college teachers experienced relatively low level of HRQOL and their mental quality of life (QOL) were impaired more seriously than physical QOL. Organizational behavior factors (PsyCap, group identification, POS and psychological empowerment) were strong predictors of college teachers’ HRQOL and are positive resources for improving teachers’ HRQOL. The enhancement of college teachers’ PsyCap, group identification, POS and psychological empowerment at work should be incorporated in the strategy of protecting and improving college teachers’ physical and mental QOL.
Highlights
College teachers play a crucial role in society as they bear the vital tasks of cultivating highly qualified special talents and developing science and culture
This study aims to investigate the relationships between organizational behavior variables (PsyCap, group identification, organizational justice, perceived organizational support (POS) and psychological empowerment) and teachers’ health related quality of life (HRQOL), and to confirm whether they are positive resources for improving teachers’ HRQOL(Conceptual map see Fig. 1), which could provide practical suggestions as to how colleges can improve their teachers’ health, improving organizational effectiveness
Effective responses were obtained from 965 college teachers
Summary
College teachers play a crucial role in society as they bear the vital tasks of cultivating highly qualified special talents and developing science and culture. In China’s academic profession, faculty hiring has been shift from “identity management” to “position management”, and the payment for performance accounts for a bigger proportion of the whole salary [1] Under this context, college teachers in China are confronted with a lot of pressure from teaching, researching and living [2]. Teacher is considered to be a highly stressful career, and there have been various studies showed that teachers are frequently under high pressure [3,4,5] They have a higher prevalence of mental and physical problems like anxiety, hypertension, headaches, psychosomatic disorders and cardiovascular diseases compared with other workers [6,7,8]. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between organizational behavior factors and college teachers’ health related quality of life (HRQOL), and to confirm whether they are positive resources for improving teachers’ HRQOL
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