Construction and Validation of an Occupational Psychological Empowerment Tool for Relief Workers of the Iranian Red Crescent Society

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Maintaining the mental health of relief workers requires improving their psychological abilities. The present study is carried out with the aim to identify the components affecting the psychological empowerment of the relief workers and to construct a tool appropriate to the psychological requirements and characteristics of the relief activities to measure the components of the occupational psychological empowerment among them. METHODS: This was an applied study performed with quantitative and qualitative methods (Mixed Method) in different stages in accordance with the study objective. FINDINGS: In this study, 351 relief workers cooperated with an average age of 28.56 and standard deviation 8.13 . The findings from the completion of questionnaires confirmed the six factors of resilience, self-management, psychological hardiness, problem-solving ability, decision-making, and emotional intelligence (EI) on the researcher-made scale. The most important factor in this study was the resilience factor with the greatest impact on the job psychological empowerment of the relief workers. CONCLUSION: Based on the results of the study, in order to reduce the pressures and stresses of relief in disasters on the relief workers and prevent them from becoming more severe psychological problems, special counseling and psychological support services should be provided to increase their resilience. In addition, the tool developed can be applied to measure the occupational psychological empowerment in volunteers, relief workers, and rescuers. Moreover, based on the scores obtained by the subjects in the scale, it can be considered as a criterion to accept or reject individuals in entering the relief activities. Furthermore, for the individuals accepted according to the characteristics of relief activities, planning can be made and training courses and workshops can be held to teach, empower, and strengthen them and enhance the components of psychological empowerment among them.