Development and Psychometric Relationship between Occupational Prestige and Social Health of Nursing Staff: A Cross-Sectional Study
<p><strong>BACKGROUND: </strong>One of the features that any profession possesses is that it occupies a social status relative to other professions. The present paper contributes to the discussion on the relationship between nursing occupational prestige and social health.</p><p><strong>METHOD:</strong> This study was a cross-sectional research that was conducted in 2015. The study population consisted of 200 staff nurses working in all hospitals located in Hamedan, Iran. A convenience sampling was employed to select 200 nurses who were asked respond to the 25item Keyes’s Social Health Questionnaire and the16-item Nursing Occupational Prestige Questionnaire. Higher score reflected better social health and occupational prestige. The quantitative analysis of this study was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).</p><p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> The results showed that the nurses’ mean score of social health and nursing occupational prestige were respectively 43.88±9.18 and occupational prestige44.83±25.14. Social health was significantly related to occupational prestige in the nurses (r=0.15, P=0.04). 66.5% of the nurses were reported to have average occupational prestige and 75.5% of them were believed to have average social health. There was a statistically significant difference in scores of the occupational prestige among the nursing post (P=0.01), job satisfaction (P<0.001) and job interest (P=0.007).</p><p><strong>CONCLUSION:</strong> Nurses’ social health deserves special attention. Effective social health promotion strategies should be considered for promoting their social health particularly in occupational prestige.</p>