Personality determinants of health behaviours of merchant navy officers

Background and aim: An individual’s health behaviours are highly correlated with selected areas of their personality as well as their values, needs and goals. However, this relationship may be modified by a number of objective factors associated with the individual’s functioning, lifestyle or occupational activity. The main objective of the presented study was to investigate the relationship between personality profiles and health behaviours of merchant navy officers.Materials and methods: The influences of personality on health behaviours were additionally compared between two groups: mariners and managers. Thirty-two seafarers of an officer rank and 45 managers aged between 29 and 48 took part in the study. Three research tools were used: NEO-Five Factor Inventory, Health Behaviour Inventory and Inventory of Physical Activity Objectives.Results and conclusions: Results suggest that selected personality variables are significant predictors of individual aspects of health behaviour, however the strength of their influence may differ, depending on the peculiarities of the performed work

Purpose in life and work-related stress in mariners. Mediating role of quality of marriage bonds and perceived anxiety

Background: The specific character of mariners’ work is connected with many factors conducive to stress, overload, fatigue and emotional tension, all of which can negatively influence subjective quality of life, including particularly the sense of life’s purpose and meaning. However, over the course of entire life one plays many various roles and takes part in many areas of life which influence one another, both positively and negatively. Undoubtedly one of such areas, essential from the point of fulfilling individual’s important needs, is one’s family and marriage that can function as a crucial factor for neutralising on-the-job problems and tensions.Aim: The research presented here attempts to verify the relation between stress perceived by mariners and their sense of purpose in life along with the mediating role of marriage quality and anxiety levels.Materials and methods: A total of 210 mariners working on deep-sea ships were examined. The following research tools were applied in the study: the Purpose in Life Test (PIL), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) and the Questionnaire of Suitable Marriage (KDM).Results and conclusions: The results arrived at indicate that both marriage satisfaction and anxiety levels can indeed mediate the relation between stress and sense of purpose in life among mariners

Stress and the level of perceived anxiety among mariners: the mediating role of marital satisfaction

The challenges of professional life are becoming more and more demanding on people’s private life, especially if a given profession requires many sacrifices and has negative consequences for one’s physicaland psychological health, as is the case of professional mariners. The purpose of this study is to attempt to verify the correlation between the quality of emotional bonds, manifested in marital satisfaction, and the level of stress and anxiety perceived by mariners. The study encompasses 210 mariners working on seagoing ships. The following research tools were employed for the purpose of the study: State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Stress Experience Questionnaire (PS) and Well-matched Marriage Questionnaire (KDM). The results indicate that marital satisfaction is correlated with the level of stress and anxiety among mariners, constituting a stress inhibitor

Postawy rodzicielskie a preferencje zawodowe młodzieży

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between parental attitudes and occupational preferences of adolescents according to A. Roe’s theory. It was hypothesized that there is a close correlation between the emotional aspect of parental attitudes and the shaping of job preferences in adolescents directed to people or to things. A significant relation between parent’s and child’s gender was also predicted. The research was conducted in 2012 and 2013, and it included a total of 314 individuals – students of the last year of high school and technical school, as well as first-year students of Tricity’s public and private universities, both women and men. Two psychometric tools were used: A Parent-Child Relation Questionnaire by A. Roe and M. Siegelman (translated by W.S. Kowalski) and A Multidimensional Preferences Questionnaire by A. Matczak, A. Jaworowski, A. Ciechanowicz, E. Zalewska and J. Stańcza, which measured professional interests. On the basis of the results, it can be assumed that parental attitudes together with the quality of emotional relations between parents and children are closely connected to specific professional preferences which, at the same time, differ depending on child’s and parent’s gender

Personality predictors of work-life balance among women

Since the earliest age, each man plays various interrelated and coexisting roles in their family, social and professional life. Individual roles are realised simultaneously or sequentially and remain in relationship. Each role may complement, expand or disturb the course of a career in life. Undoubtedly, family/personal life and work are the key areas of human life. One cannot treat both these areas as independent of each other. There exists a continuous spillover between them – a natural, dynamic process developing over the entire course of human life. The effective integration of the spheres of work and family functioning is conditioned by many factors. On the basis of the literature, we can divide the determinants of the integration of these two roles into two categories: environmental, resulting, for instance, from the specific nature of the workplace or organization, the roles fulfilled, and the profession; individual, which can be associated with the properties of the individual, such as gender, age, education, children, or the status of the relationship, or they may result from the structure of the personality and the mental properties of the individual, such as motivation, values, level of commitment, mental health, physical health, etc. One of the crucial elements in the process of balancing work and family roles is the personality. The research on this issue indicates that among the dimensions of personality that have particular importance are neuroticism and extraversion, which significantly affect the direction and quality of the spillover between these two spheres of functioning. The aim of presented study was verify personality predictors of work-life balance among women. The survey involved 160 women with the various education, working professionally and possessing the least one child

Psychosocial work strains and well-being in the process of adapting to occupational stress: longitudinal studies of offshore rig workers

Background The work on offshore rigs is related to a number of physical and mental burdens. The subject matter of the paper refers to the assessment of the relation between the mode of adapting to occupational stress and the feeling of well-being among the employees of offshore rigs in Poland. Participants and procedure The research procedure is a longitudinal study and encompasses analysis of data between 1993 and 2014. 167 employees of the Polish offshore rigs were studied: all of them were male and the average age was 42. Measuring tools were used to as-sess the subjective occupational stress, psychosocial work conditions, evaluation of physical and mental well-being and styles of coping with stress. Results The perceived level of stress directly affects mental well-being (r = .19, p = .048): the higher the level of stress, the worse is the mental well-being (β = –.30). In a considerable part, the dependence between occupational stress and mental well-being may be clarified by the impact of the style of coping with occupational stress and the rate of stress dynamics (r = .32, p = .004). The higher the share of task-oriented coping style as compared to the emotion and avoidance-oriented style, the higher is the self-reported mental well-being. The higher the probability of affiliation with the group reporting a decrease in stress, the higher is the self-reported mental well-being. Perceiving stress has no direct or indirect impact on physical well-being (β =. 09; β = .08; β = –.11). Conclusions A dependence exists between the process of adapting to stress and the level of the self-reported mental well-being of the rig employees. The higher the probability of adaptation to the difficult situation at work in a way that the self-reported stress is reduced, the higher the self-reported mental well-being. Perceiving stress bears no direct or indirect impact on the physical well-being

Mediating role of parental educational styles in relationship of the number of siblings and personality and social skills of people in early adulthood

The aim of the study was to verify the hypothesis that parenting styles (especially democratic and autocratic styles) may be variables that mediate in the relationship between the number of siblings and shaping certain personality traits and social skills in children’s development. The study involved over 300 people divided into three groups: those who have one brother or sister, those who have several siblings and only children. Over 100 people were tested in each group. The following measuring tools were used: the Social Competence Questionnaire by A. Matczak, the Parenting Styles Questionnaire by M. Ryś, and the NEO-FFI questionnaire by P.T. Costa and R.R. McCrae (in Polish adaptation by B. Zawadzki, J. Strelau, P. Szczepaniak, M. Śliwinska). The impact of the number of siblings on the functioning and social competence and personality of the respondents is mediated by both democratic (positive) and autocratic (negative) attitudes of mothers (proximal mediator – close to exogenous variable, here: the number of siblings), as well as by the attitude of fathers, which is a distal (indirect) mediator, although closely related to the attitudes of mothers. Mothers’ attitudes also proved to be a mediator in the relationship between the number of siblings and the attitudes of fathers

Work engagement, emotional attitude to work and quality of relations in ‘early’ and ‘late’ dual career couples: the mediating role of satisfaction with one’s achievements

Background The aim of the present research was to evaluate the relationship between the level of work involvement and emotional attitude to work and the quality of marital relationships of partners in dual career relationships, divided into ‘early career’ and ‘late career’ relationships. In addition, the mediating role of satisfaction with one’s accomplishments was assessed. Participants and procedure The study included 184 dual career couples, where both partners pursued a professional career in a competitive labour market, often performed managerial functions and reconciled their professional roles with parental roles, where 69 were ‘early career’ relationships and 115 were ‘late career’ relationships. All subjects in the dual career marriages had higher education; the age of the respondents ranged from 28 to 43 years and all of them had at least one child. With respect to the applied research tools, the AVEM Questionnaire, the Labour-Family Matching Questionnaire, the Matching Marriage Questionnaire (KDM-2) and the Feeling of Happiness Questionnaire were used. Results The results show a negative impact of the level of professional and emotional work engagement on the quality of marital relations in the relationship; however, the observed trend only refers to the ‘late career’ relationships. Therefore, it can be concluded that the level of engagement in professional roles at the moment of entering into a relationship is an important moderating factor in these relationships. In addition, it was found that the level of self-satisfaction eliminates this negative relationship. We can say that the level of satisfaction is the mediator of the relationship between involvement in profes-sional roles and the quality of marital relationships. Conclusions The level of work engagement and emotional attitude toward work affects the quality of personal life and relationships in a couple. However, this impact can vary due to additional variables such as satisfaction with one’s own accomplishments and type of relationship

Personality and Competence Predictors of Management Styles among Managers

wyjaśniania relacji na linii przełożony – podwładny na przestrzeni lat sukcesywnie odchodziły od tezy, iż właściwości menedżera stanowią jedyny czynnik determinujący podejmowane przez niego style zarządzania ludźmi. Współcześnie stosunkowo dużą popularnością cieszą się tzw. sytuacyjne teorie kierowania, uwzględniające, poza zmiennymi podmiotowymi menedżera, inne czynniki związane na przykład z podwładnymi, organizacją czy rodzajem zadania. Prezentowane badanie miało na celu zweryfikowanie, w jakim zakresie zmienne wynikające z właściwości menedżera mogą stanowić istotne predyktory podejmowanych stylów kierowania i zarządzania podwładnymi. Objęło ono łącznie 128 menedżerów obojga płci średniego i wyższego szczebla zarządzania. Wyniki przeprowadzonych badań pokazały, iż zmienne osobowościowe i kompetencyjne odgrywają istotną rolę w podejmowaniu stylów kierowania.Theories that provide the basis for creating classifications of management styles, as well as for explaining superior–subordinate relations have, over successive years, abandoned the view that a manager’s properties are the only factor determining the management style that the manager will apply in managing people. Currently, what are known as situational management theories are enjoying relative popularity. In addition to subjective variables relating to the manager, they also take into account other factors, such as those associated with subordinates, the organization, and the type of task. The presented study is aimed at verifying the degree to which variables stemming from a manager’s properties might serve as essential predictors of management and employee control styles. The study encompassed a total of 128 managers of both sexes, both middle and upper management. Research findings demonstrate that personality and competence variables play a significant role in choice of management style