Impact of the psychosocial aspects of work on the quality of life of teachers

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes,Marcos Henrique
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Outros Autores: Rocha,Vera Maria da
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry (São Paulo. 1999. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-44462009000100005
• topic: Quality of life; Faculty; Brazil; Working conditions; Psychosocial impact

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the impact of psychosocial aspects on the quality of life of teachers from municipal schools in Natal, Brazil. METHOD: descriptive study with a cross-sectional design and a sample of 242 elementary school teachers. We used the WHOQOL-bref to assess the quality of life as well as questions about the level of control and the psychological demand of work from the Job Content Questionnaire. RESULTS: the overall evaluation of quality of life showed that the physical and environmental domains had the lowest mean scores. According to the psychosocial aspects, most of the subjects (67 individuals = 32.1%) were characterized as having active work (high demand and control), followed by 54 teachers (25.8%) with demanding work (high demand and little control). These two groups have shown to be more affected in the assessment of physical (p < 0.001), psychological (p < 0.001), and environment (p < 0.001) domains of quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: Teachers who had tasks characterized as active and demanding were more affected in the quality of life domain. This finding suggests the need for greater investment in health-promotion policies among teachers.