Nazan Savas, Ersin Nazlican and Ebru Turhan
Objective:The aim was to evaluate job satisfaction and their sociodemographic characteristics effects on the quality of life (QOL) of the garbage workers (GW).
Methods:185 GW (94.4% of total) were evaluated. They were given sociodemographic survey, scaler of job satisfaction (Job Descriptive Index (JDI)) and QOL Scale “WHOQOL-BREF-Turkish”. Questions of JDI were compiled by researhers. Reliability and convenience of JDI were analysed. Correlation, student-T test and logistic regression were used.
Findings:68.4% of job satisfaction had five contributing factors which are respectively management and overall job satisfaction, coworkers, pay, promotion and work itself. We found positive correlations (p<0.05) between scorings of WHOQOL-BREF-Tr domains and JDI’s components, except promotion. We also saw positive relations between WHOQOL-BREF-Tr scorings and some of workers’ behaviors and habits ranging having particular hobbies, going to movies, visiting friends/family, and not having chronic disease (p<0.01). Lack of satisfaction in each of 5 factors - dissatisfaction to management in all domains, dissatisfaction to work itself in social domain, dissatisfaction to coworkers in physical domain, dissatisfaction to pay in social and environmental domains caused a risk for poor QOL (p<0.01). Not having a hobby also created a risk for QOL in social and environmental domains (p<0.01).
Conclusion:The findings show that the QOL of the GW can be improved by improving the management, payment, and by encouraging and supporting them to have hobbies.