Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Background & Objectives: One of the essential health variables is resilience, a psychological component that increases the human ability to adapt and overcome dangers and difficulties. One of the most important problems in adulthood is job satisfaction. It is a positive and pleasant feeling that a person has about his job and is related to work stress. At present, lifestyle is considered one of the main indicators of health, which leads to the promotion of health. Resilience and job satisfaction can be optimized in educational settings. As previous theoretical and empirical studies have shown, these two components are not fixed variables. They can be taught and learned by scientific and theoretical theories to enhance resilience in people and improve their job satisfaction. In this regard, using the global health model and positive education can lead to valuable results. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of healthy lifestyle training based on the model of the World Health Organization on resilience and job satisfaction of government employees in Hamadan Province, Iran.
Methods: The current research was conducted with a quasi–experimental method with a pretest and posttest design with a control group. The study population included all managers and civil servants with physical disabilities in Hamadan Province, Iran, in 2017 (about 217 people). The sampling method was purposive and based on the research questionnaires. Their resilience and their job satisfaction were assessed via Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003) and Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Smith et al., 2014). Ninety people were randomly selected for the first phase of the study. After explaining the content of the research, its specific goals and conditions, as well as their disabilities at the time of conducting the research, finally, 30 individuals were selected who had low scores in both resilience and job satisfaction tests. The subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental and control group (each group 15). The inclusion criteria were obtaining a score less than 50 on the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale, obtaining a score of 72 and less in the Job Satisfaction Questionnaire, and having a minimum age of 40 years. The exclusion criteria included a person with debilitating diseases, severe cardiovascular disorders, and disabling musculoskeletal disorders (the presence or absence of these diseases was assessed by self–report) and absence of at least three sessions from the training classes. For the experiment group, we provided the lifestyle training according to the World Health Model (2013) and no training was provided for the control group. The research data were analyzed with descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (the multivariate analysis of covariance) in SPSS version 25. The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.
Results: After removing the pretest effect, there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the mean resilience of the studied employees (F=126.237, p<0.001). In addition, in the job satisfaction variable, after removing the pretest effect, there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the mean job satisfaction (F=106.148, p<0.001).
Conclusion: The results show that healthy lifestyle education is effective on staff’s resilience and job satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study, life style training program can be considered an effective way to promote resiliency and job satisfaction in employees.