Lifestyle Profile and Professional Satisfaction of Social Services Workers

This research aims to identify the lifestyle profile and the professional satisfaction of social services workers in Romania, taking into account their individual characteristics, the way they value their own health and their career. The methodological design is a quantitative one. The sample consists of 278 participants who are active in the social work field, most of them being part of the National College of Social Workers. There are two scales used in the development of the instrument: the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile (Walker, Hill-Polerecky, 1996) and the Generic Job Satisfaction Scale (Macdonald, Maclntyre, 1997). The results indicate that social workers' lifestyles are healthy, from the physical and mental perspective, on a scale from moderate to high. People who work with socially assisted beneficiaries have a job satisfaction whose level increases exponentially when their lifestyle is healthier. The job satisfaction of people who work with social assisted beneficiaries increases exponentially when their lifestyle is healthier. The relationship between the way of life of the respondents and their professional satisfaction is influenced by the type of the social services they provide. Spiritual development and stress management are the most important lifestyle components when it comes to increasing job satisfaction. For people in the private sector, this satisfaction increases more powerful with the adoption of a healthy lifestyle than it does for respondents in the public sector. The research achieved its objectives by identifying the interdependencies between the measured dimensions and the life characteristics of the study participants.


Keywords: healthy lifestyle, job satisfaction, social work