Session Information
26 SES 06 A, Engagement, Shadowing and Action Research
Paper Session
Contribution
Psychology has traditionally focused on psychological deficits and disability until recently (Carr, 2004). Therefore, psychology has been criticized as primarily dedicated to addressing mental illness rather than mental ‘‘wellness.’’ (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008). However, nowadays positive psychology perspective attracted most of the scholars’ attention such that researchers from different disciplines try to focus and make research on employees' positive emotions and behaviors rather than negative ones. This new branch of psychology is primarily concerned with the scientific study of human strengths and happiness (Carr, 2004; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). According this school of view, we must bring the building of strength to the forefront in the treatment and prevention of mental illness (Seligman, 2002) not the deficits and illness. Viewed from this “positive” perspective, it is not surprising that burnout research seems to shift towards its opposite: work engagement.
Maslach and Leiter (1997) assumes that engagement and burnout constitute the opposite poles of a continuum of work related well-being. According to their point of view while burnout represents the negative pole, engagement represent the positive. Contrary to those who suffer from burnout, engaged employees have a sense of energetic and effective connection with their work, and instead of stressful and demanding they look upon their work as challenging (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008). Work engagement can be defined as “a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma & Bakker, 2002, p. 74). In an ever-changing world, schools, like other organizations, must be cooperative, cohesive, and well-managed ever than before in order to be responsive, effective, and productive (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2000). For schools to be effective
The purpose of the study
The purpose of this research is to examine the psychometric properties of long (UWES-17) and short forms (UWES-9) of Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006; Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, & Bakker, 2002) for the Turkish school principals. Although long and short forms of UWES scale adopted in Turkish by Eryılmaz & Doğa (2012), factor structure of it was not tested for school principals.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bakker, A. B., Schaufeli, W. B., Leiter, M. P., & Taris, T. W. (2008). Work engagement: An emerging concept in occupational health psychology. Work & Stress, 22(3), 187-200. Carr, A. (2004). Positive psychology: The science of happiness and human strengths. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge. Eryılmaz, A., & Doğa, T. (2012). Subjective well-being at work: Investigating of psychometric properties of Utrecht work engagement scale. Klinik Psikiyatri Dergisi [Journal of Clinical Psychiatry], 15(1). 49-55. Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS: And sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll (3rd Ed). London: Sage Publications. Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Pallant, J. (2011). SPSS survival manual: A step by step guide to data analysis using SPSS for Windows (4th Ed.). Berkshire: Open University Press. Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Salanova, M. (2006). The measurement of work engagement with a short questionnaire a cross-national study. Educational and psychological Measurement, 66(4), 701-716. Schaufeli, W.B., Salanova, M., Gonza´lez-Roma´ , V. & Bakker, A.B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 71-92. Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Positive psychology, positive prevention, and positive therapy. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 3–9). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-14. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics: Pearson Education Inc. Boston, MA. Thompson, B. (2004). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis: Understanding concepts and applications. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Tschannen-Moran, M & Hoy, W. K. (2000). A multidisciplinary analysis of the nature, meaning, and measurement of trust. Review of Educational Research, 70(4), 547-593.
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