Seyed Esmaeil Hashemi, Catherine T. Kwantes,
Volume 16, Issue 1 (5-2022)
The purpose of the present study was to examine the religiosity- work ethics relationship and PWE-IWE similarities in a sample of Iranian university students. The participants consisted of 694 students (582 females and 112 male) who voluntarily participated in the study, and completed the religiosity subscale of the Social Axioms Survey, the Multidimensional Protestant Work Ethic Profile, and Ali’s Islamic Work Ethics Questionnaire. Several principal component analyses on both PWE and IWE items separately for students with high and low religiosity scores revealed that the factor structures and loadings were relatively similar; indicating that regardless of the level of religiosity, there probably is a common work ethic (CWE) construct instead of two separate religious based constructs of PWE and IWE. To test this probability, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on all items of PWE and IWE (CWE) with all participants. An examination of the variance accounted for by a six-factor solution explained approximately 41.89% of variance. Using t-tests of mean differences between low and high religiosity groups regarding CWE factors were examined, indicating that although the means were very close to each other, the differences still remained statistically significant due to the high sample size. Finally, several regression analyses were conducted to examine the role of religiosity in prediction of each of the six CWE factors (Work conditions and values, hard work, centrality of work, self-reliance, leisure, and morality), controlling for demographic (age, gender, father’s and mother’s education, family social and economic statuses) variables. Results showed that there is a weak relationship between religiosity and work ethics. In sum, it appears that work ethic is more a culture-based construct than do religion based.
.png){kind=icon}
