Iranian Journal of Medical Education

Introduction: Happiness can boost faculty members’ positive emotions on the one hand and enhance productivity by decreasing negative emotions on the other. Previous research on workplace happiness has ignored the role of employment status. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare workplace happiness among tenured and contract faculty members.
Methods: This study was a descriptive cross-sectional research. Statistical population included all faculty members of University of Sistan and Baluchistan. A sample of 183 (121 tenured and 62 contract faculty members) were selected by stratified random sampling method. The following standard questionnaires were used to measure the variables: organizational justice, job security, job meaningfulness, job interest, participation, interaction and organizational learning. Content validity and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were utilized to determine the questionnaires’ validity and reliability. Data were analyzed using independent t-test.
Results: The mean scores of tenured and contract faculty members respectively were calculated for the areas of job interest (3.99±0.56 and 4.08±0.57, P=0.322), job meaningfulness (3.96±0.59 and 4.01±0.69, P=0.759), organizational learning (3.96±0.41 and 4.01±0.33, P=0.395), participation (4.06±0.55 and 4.09±0.52, P=690), interaction (4.17±0.55 and 4.25±0.48, P=0.380), job security (4.89±0.39 and 4.05±0.56, P=0.001) and organizational justice (4.21±0.42 and 3.91±0.67, P=0.001). A significant difference was found between the two groups in organizational justice and job security of tenured faculty members.
Conclusion: Although findings indicated that workplace happiness of faculty members was not much affected by the employment status, university administrators could facilitate the contract-to-tenure process and thus improve job stability and workplace happiness of contract faculty members.