Psychological distress, Job satisfaction and work engagement: a mediation study in a sample of Palestinian teachers

Background: Work engagement can be described as “a positive fulfilling affective and motivational state of work-related wellbeing that represent the antipode of job strain” ( Leiter & Bakker, 2010, p. 2). Work engagement is considered to be an indicator of intrinsic work motivation (Crant, 2000) and it represents a key factor of workers’ subjective well-being. Research examining people’s reactions to differential stressful conditions has shown that the relationship between traumatic events and their effects on psychological distress may be better understood by taking into account protective factors buffering the impact of events on direct (e.g. impact of trauma) or indirect (e.g., psychological distress, anxiety, depression) traumatization (Richardson & Ratner, 2005; Veronese & Pepe, 2014). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the relationship among psychological distress, job satisfaction, and work engagement in a sample of Palestinian teachers living in contexts of low intensity warfare and political violence. To our knowledge, little researches have been conducted on the cumulative network of relationships among the three variables. It was expected that the relationship between job satisfaction and psychological distress might be fully mediated by levels of work engagement. Sample and Methods: The sample of this cross-sectional research was composed of 380 inservice primary and lower secondary Palestinian teachers. The participants completed the Arabic versions of the Teacher Job satisfaction scale (TJSS-9), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12) and the Utrecht Work Engagement scale (UWE-SF). Following the tradition of mediation studies, the statistical strategy was based on structural equation modelling (SEM) aimed at testing whether the hypothesized set of direct and indirect paths among variables fit to empirical data. Findings: Results indicated that the model reported an excellent fit [χ 2 (23)=69.6 ( p < .05), NC = 3.02, NFI = .939, NNFI = .959, CFI = .958, RMSEA = .073, SRMR = .06] supporting the mediation hypothesis. Job satisfaction and psychological distress exhibited a moderate and positive relationship, however such relation was fully mediated by levels of work engagement (F = 17.05, p < .001, R2 = .16). The direct effect of job satisfaction on work engagement was positive and medium in size. Interpretation: The main finding of the study advocates that work engagement may buffer the impact of job satisfaction on psychological teachers’ distress lessening the effect of difficult working conditions. It further suggested that in order to mediate the effect of low job satisfaction on psychological distress of teachers, organizational policies and practices should focus on improving the level of engagement of employee. This means that, in developing job programs for teachers in contexts characterized by difficult working conditions, the main focus for workers must be at increasing the level of subjective resources and workers’ engagement rather than focusing primarily on job satisfaction.