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Introduction
Since a significant part of human life is associated with professional activities, especially relevant are psychological studies of the uniqueness of human well-being in the professional sphere. The term "professional well-being" is used to denote a person's well-being in the professional sphere (Warr, 1990). This name is quite broad and covers not only the subjective side of human well-being in the professional sphere, but also objective non-psychological characteristics (Van Horn et al., 2004).
The presence in the scientific literature of numerous descriptions of various aspects of psychological well-being in the organizational and professional space indicates a lack of sufficient theoretical basis and common understanding of professional well-being, as well as the need to clarify and operationalize this concept. There is a tendency to create multi-component psychological models of professional well-being based on the general theoretical basis laid down in the model of psychological well-being Ryff & Keyes (1995), taking into account the specifics of a particular professional activity. The results of studies indicate that the activities of workers in socionomic professions deserves special attention in the study of this problem (Voitenko et al., 2021a). They are more affected by objective stressful situations than other professions, which lead to a complex of disorders of subjective psychological well-being (Voitenko et al., 2021b). The purpose of this study is to theoretically and empirically substantiate the composition of the construct of subjective professional well-being of higher education teachers in Ukraine, as well as the criteria for its evaluation.
Analysis of scientific publications suggests that the main methodological issues of studying the phenomenon of professional well-being in psychology include the problem of defining this concept, as well as distinguishing it from similar in content, but not identical constructs. In the scientific literature there are numerous descriptions of various aspects of well-being as a positive human activity in the organizational and professional space: civic behavior (organizational citizenship behavior) (Jahangir et al., 2004), flow state (flow) (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014), quality of life at work (QWL) (Abdi et al., 2020) and so on. All these concepts are united by the presence of work-related positive attitudes and human experiences. Such ambiguity indicates the immaturity of the conceptual apparatus used in this area.
On the other hand, based on the analysis of the scientific literature, we can note the growing interest in this issue, which is associated with the active development of positive psychology in recent decades. Researchers are trying to understand what mechanisms underlie professional well-being (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007), how they are involved in behavioral regulation (Rasskazova & Ivanova, 2019), how it affects relationships with others and in choosing appropriate behavioral strategies (Voitenko et al., 2021b). Attempts have been made to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of professional well-being (Van Horn et al., 2004). Diagnostic tools are being developed to measure the level of professional well-being (Waterman et al., 2010; Rut, 2016). The influence of various objective and subjective factors on the professional well-being of the individual is shown. Professional well-being is related to the organizational culture (Tkachenko & SHemyakina, 2019), as well as the culture of managerial interaction. Gossip in the workplace has been recognized as a factor that severely undermines occupational health and well-being (Aghbolagh et al., 2021). The connection of psychological well-being with individual psychological features of personality is revealed: with professional self-realization (Glavinska et al., 2020), with psychological self-regulation (Rasskazova & Ivanova, 2019), with creative activity of personality (Dolgih, 2019).
A review of the literature reveals the tendency to create psychological models of professional well-being on the basis of the general theoretical basis laid down in the model of psychological well-being Ryff & Keyes (1995). Based on the ideas of positive psychology, Ryff & Keyes (1995), created a model of psychological well-being, which is associated with personal growth opportunities, life goals, self-acceptance, the degree of autonomy in a favorable socio-psychological environment (development of positive social relations and control over the environment), as well as the experience of satisfaction from the processes and results of realizing their aspirations. Ryff & Keyes (1995), model has a general psychological character, the well-being of the individual is considered by the author outside the specific spheres of human life. In the new models of professional well-being, components are introduced that reflect the uniqueness of a particular professional activity. In one of the first models proposed by the English psychologist Warr (1990), professional well-being was seen as a psychological structure determined by the conditions and content of work, which includes four primary components - the desire for growth and development, autonomy, emotional well-being and competence. The indicators obtained for these components were then summed up in the final indicator "integrated functionality", which characterizes the subjective side of professional well-being. This model emphasizes the role of emotional experiences in achieving professional well-being. Competence is determined by the degree of development of professional knowledge, skills and abilities and is a necessary prerequisite for successful performance of work and experiencing a person's professional well-being.
Later, based on the Warr (1990), and Ryff & Keyes (1995), models, a multidimensional model of occupational well-being was proposed and tested, which included affective, cognitive, occupational, social, and psychosomatic dimensions (Van Horn et al., 2004). The emergence of the psychosomatic component in this model is the result of empirical studies that have shown a close relationship between somatic complaints and the level of professional well-being. The authors of the multidimensional model have shown that the greatest contribution to achieving professional well-being is made by emotional components.
Taris & Schaufeli (2015), confirmed previous conceptualizations of subjective well-being, which focused mainly on affect. These authors found that even in multidimensional research, affective experience, characterized by positive and negative work-related emotions, was an important element in judging well-being at work. At the same time, realization and personal self-expression are considered important by leading theorists working on the operationalization of the concept of well-being at work (Waterman et al., 2010).
However, despite the wide range of theoretical approaches, meaningfully related to the study of the phenomenon of subjective and / or psychological well-being of the individual, the problem of studying the well-being of the individual in the context of professional activity has not yet received a comprehensive and systematic scientific analysis in psychology. In the course of the research, we tried to find answers to the following questions:
What are the ideas of higher education teachers in Ukraine about professional well-being?
Is the perception of professional well-being changed depending on the gender of the respondents?
What organizational factors contribute to the state of well-being in a professional context?
What personal resources contribute to well-being in a professional context?
Materials and methods
PARTICIPANTS
We conducted a survey of higher school teachers (n = 45), selected by random selection. Google Forms were used for the survey. The most important for the research topic socio-demographic characteristics of respondents are presented in table 1.
Respondents were asked 3 open-ended questions about their perception of professional well-being, organizational factors and personal resources that shape the state of professional well-being. In order to conceptualize and operationalize the concept of professional well-being, the method of content analysis of the received answers was applied.
At the first stage of the study, the answers of the respondents were divided into semantic units (Ahmanova, 2007) with the following primary categorization. In the process of categorization, semantic units were grouped into thematic groups, which are repeated in the respondents’ answers, and generalized into primary semantic categories. The selected categories are the most indicative in terms of describing professional well-being, as they combine all units of content analysis.
The next stage of the study was the development of a codebook. The research team used a decimal numbering system to suggest the estimated content of each category. For example, all topics assigned the digital code 1.x belonged to the Working Conditions category. The number after the decimal distinguishes between different working conditions, named by the respondents, in no particular sequence. With regard to the developed codebook, a group expert evaluation procedure was conducted to agree on the content of the selected categories. Three doctors of sciences in the field of psychology acted as experts. At the request of experts, two amendments were made to the codebook. Thus, the topics “Professional Development” and “Increasing of qualification” were included in the category of “Self-Development” instead of the category of “Professionalism”. As a result of these changes, the final codebook contained sixty-five topics, fourteen categories, and their corresponding numerical codes (see Appendix 1).
At the next stage, the mechanical coding of the selected semantic units was applied. Three encoders were instructed to encode semantic units. To ensure high reliability of coding, people with similar cultural, educational levels and professional experience were involved as coders. The researchers instructed each encoder in detail on the procedure for assigning a numeric code to each semantic unit independently. The concordance coefficient (W) were used to check the consistency of the opinion of a group of coders.
To investigate the importance of well-being aspects for respondents, we calculated the frequency of semantic categories as an indicator of the visibility of each thematic code, based on which priority categories were identified in the answers to each question. The average value for each category in the selected groups of workers was calculated. The distribution normality test found a significant difference between the data and the normal distribution (p≤0,001), which led to the choice of non-parametric criteria for assessing the statistical significance of differences between the selected groups of respondents. Data processing was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 22.
Results and discussion
Definition of the concept of professional well-being. According to the answers to the first question, 93 semantic units were obtained, which during the categorization were generalized into 7 semantic categories (Table 2). The calculation of the concordance coefficient revealed the presence of a high level of consistency of the obtained codes according to the answers of men (W = 0.95, α ≤0.05) and women (W = 0.95, α ≤0.05), so the obtained results have meaning and can be used in further research.
Table 2 Frequency and priority of categories according to the answers to the question “What is professional well-being for you?”
f=Frequency, P= Percent of Answers for Each Group
As can be seen from table 2, the highest frequencies in the groups of men and women are different. Thus, for men the more important element of professional well-being is the possibility of self-actualization (20.5%), which provides for recognition, the possibility of creative realization, professional demand; but for women it is engagement in work processes (27.8%), namely interest in work, satisfaction with the work process and satisfaction with its results. Comparisons of male and female samples did not reveal statistically significant differences in responses. Examination using the Pearson Chi-Square test showed that the differences between the two empirical distributions of data are insignificant at a level of statistical significance p>0.05 (Table 3). Therefore, the general frequency indicators are accepted for interpretation.
Table 3 - Chi-Square Test-1.
| Value | df | Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pearson Chi-Square | 6,000 | 8 | ,647 |
| Likelihood Ratio | 8,318 | 8 | ,403 |
| Linear-by-Linear Association | ,659 | 1 | ,417 |
| N of Valid Cases | 14 |
df = the degrees of freedom, Asymp. Sig. = the P-value.
Identification of organizational factors that increase the level of professional well-being. According to the answers to the question "What organizational factors increase the level of professional well-being?" 84 semantic units were obtained, which during categorization were combined into 9 semantic categories (Table 4). The calculation of the concordance coefficient revealed the presence of a high level of consistency of the obtained codes according to the answers of men (W = 0.99, α ≤0.05) and women (W = 0.99, α ≤0.05), so the obtained results have meaning and can be used in further research.
Table 4 Frequency and priority of codes for answers to the question "What organizational factors increase the level of professional well-being?"
f=Frequency, P= Percent of Answers
As can be seen from Table 4, groups of men and women have different assessments of organizational factors influencing professional well-being. Thus, according to men, the level of professional well-being depends more on positive relationships within the team (15.4%), but according to women, the most important factor is management efficiency (22%), which provides planning, clearness of the goals, and predictability in the organization. The difference in the assessment of the role of the possibility of self-actualization in improving the level of professional well-being is also noticeable. Among men, the importance of this factor is 15.4%, but among women - only 4.4%. Unlike men, women associate professional well-being more with the possibility of professional growth (15.6%), as well as with leadership style (13.3%). Comparisons of male and female samples did not reveal statistically significant differences in responses. Examination using the Pearson Chi-Square test showed that the differences between the two empirical distributions of data are insignificant at a level of statistical significance p>0.05 (Table 5). Therefore, the general frequency indicators are accepted for interpretation.
Table 5 - Chi-Square Test-2.
| Value | df | Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) | |
| Pearson Chi-Square | 8,000 | 8 | ,433 |
| Likelihood Ratio | 11,090 | 8 | ,197 |
| Linear-by-Linear Association | ,140 | 1 | ,708 |
| N of Valid Cases | 18 |
df = the degrees of freedom, Asymp. Sig. = the P-value.
Identification of personal determinants of professional well-being. According to the answers to the question "What are your personal qualities that increase the level of your professional well-being?" 96 semantic units were obtained, which were grouped into 10 semantic categories during categorization (Table 6). The calculation of the concordance coefficient revealed the presence of a high level of consistency of the received codes according to the answers of men (W = 0.98, α ≤0.05) and women (W = 0.95, α ≤0.05), so the results obtained have meaning and can be used in further research.
Table 6 - Frequency and priority of codes for answers to the question. What personal characteristics that increase the level of your professional well-being?
f=Frequency, P= Percent of Answers
As can be seen from Table 6, groups of men and women have different assessments of personal determinants of professional well-being. According to men, the main personal determinants of professional well-being are moral qualities (15.9%), such as responsibility, decency, diligence, adventurism; desire for professional development (13.7%), which involves curiosity, increasing the level of knowledge; as well as personal qualities that provide positive attitudes (13.7%): sociability, altruism and friendliness and professionalism (13.7%). The group of women associates professional well-being primarily with the volitional qualities of the individual (23.1%), such as patience, perseverance, determination, energy and discipline; and defines the role of personal resources (9.6%) in professional well-being as more important than the role of personal qualities that provide positive relationships (7.7%). Comparisons of male and female samples did not reveal statistically significant differences in responses. Examination using the Pearson Chi-Square test showed that the differences between the two empirical distributions of data are insignificant at a level of statistical significance p> 0.05 (Table 7). Therefore, the general frequency indicators are accepted for interpretation.
Table 7 - Chi-Square Test-3.
| Value | df | Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) | |
| Pearson Chi-Square | 11,333 | 8 | ,184 |
| Likelihood Ratio | 15,589 | 8 | ,049 |
| Linear-by-Linear Association | ,392 | 1 | ,531 |
| N of Valid Cases | 20 |
df = the degrees of freedom, Asymp. Sig. = the P-value.
Analysis of answers to the question "What is professional well-being for you?" showed that respondents define this phenomenon primarily because of satisfaction with working conditions, which include moderate workload, convenient schedule, material satisfaction. This is in good agreement with previous research on the organization and the workspace as a platform for addressing issues of protection and promotion of health and psychological well-being of workers (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). According to perceptions of our respondents, the structure of professional well-being is also dominated by positive states related to involvement in work processes: enjoyment of work, desire and interest in work, job satisfaction. Affective experiences characterized by positive and negative work-related emotions are an important element in judging well-being at work (Taris & Schaufeli, 2015).
According to the respondents, a significant component of professional well-being is the possibility of self-actualization related to the realization of abilities, recognition, demand and creativity. This fact is due to the specifics of the sample: higher school teacher is creative thinking, motivated to succeed, socially active person. The vast majority of teachers use career opportunities for a wide and diverse realization of their abilities and implementation of life plans (Voitenko et al., 2021a). This is primarily due to the orientation of the individual to self-development and belongs mainly to the personal structural elements of professional well-being (Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Professional demand is a motive for self-realization in the profession, and the results of the work allow the specialist to feel like a professional and a member of a certain reference group (Kovalenko & Ryk, 2020).
Emphasis on self-realization and personal self-expression as elements of professional well-being has also been made in previous attempts to operationalize this concept (Taris & Schaufeli, 2015). Less prominent components of professional well-being in our study were professionalism, which includes competence, professional goals and practical experience; self-development and availability of career and professional growth; autonomy as freedom of action and lack of pressure and positive relationships in the professional environment. Professional competence is acquired in the process of professional activity, at the same time increasing the success of the specialist, his authority and, accordingly, the subjective professional well-being (Kovalenko & Ryk, 2020).
Professional autonomy is formed on the basis of experience, positive reinforcement of performance, a sense of demand. Freedom of action is an integral feature of a professionally developed specialist (Kovalenko & Ryk, 2020). Professional growth is considered a predictor of self-realization of an individual (Glavinska et al., 2020). Positive relations with the team and the attitude of colleagues to the employee as a professional are important for professional well-being. Professional well-being is related to organizational culture (Tkachenko & SHemyakina, 2019), as well as to the culture of managerial interaction. Unlike the multidimensional model of occupational well-being (Van Horn et al., 2004), our respondents' perceptions lack a psychosomatic component that shows the presence or absence of psychosomatic complaints, as well as a cognitive component that characterizes the state of cognitive function.
Analysis of answers to the question "What organizational factors increase the level of professional well-being?" showed that according to higher school teachers, among the objective factors on which their professional well-being depends, in addition to working conditions, the most noticeable are the effectiveness of management, which provides planning, predictability and systemic work, clarity of goal, and measures to prevent burnout; positive relationships in the team, the availability of opportunities for professional growth, leadership style and conditions for self-realization. Variables regulated by the organizational environment, such as satisfaction with the organization of work processes, recognition of the achievements of the specialist by the professional community, as well as positive relationships correlate more than others with the psychological well-being of professionals (Glavinska et al., 2020). The importance of a favorable socio-psychological environment for the well-being of the individual has been repeatedly emphasized in previous studies (Ryff & Keyes, 1995; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007).
There is also connection between psychological well-being and individual psychological personality traits, such as self-esteem (Ryff & Keyes, 1995), professional self-realization (Glavinska et al., 2020), and psychological self-regulation (Rasskazova & Ivanova, 2019). According to our respondents, the level of professional well-being is increased primarily by volitional qualities, such as patience, perseverance, purposefulness, energy, discipline; moral qualities that include responsibility, decency, diligence, adventurism; qualities that ensure self-development, such as curiosity and the desire to increase the level of knowledge; properties that form positive relationships in the work environment, such as sociability, altruism, friendliness; personal resources that include a sense of humor, optimism, intelligence, viability and flexibility.
Conclusions
Thus, the content analysis showed that the perceptions of higher school teachers about their professional well-being reflect not only the subjective side, but also the objective indicators related to non-psychological characteristics. According to the analysis of respondents' responses, professional well-being is a positive state associated with satisfaction with various aspects of professional activity, based on which three components can be identified: satisfaction with working conditions, engagement in work processes (emotional component); awareness of one's own professionalism and opportunities for self-realization in work, as well as the opportunity to build a career and professional growth (motivational component), satisfaction with interpersonal relationships in the team (behavioral component). Thus, as the main criterion for assessing the professional well-being of the individual can be used the degree of his satisfaction with certain aspects of professional activity.
There are no statistically significant differences in perceptions of professional well-being between groups of men and women. Therefore, based on the overall results, we can define professional well-being as an integral indicator of optimal functioning of the individual in the professional sphere, which represents the degree of his satisfaction with the process and result of professional activity, professional environment and organizational context. It is a complex construct that contains emotional, motivational and behavioral components. The selected structure corresponds to the general psychological model of psychological well-being as the realization of the desire for personal growth and autonomy in a favorable environment, proposed by Ryff & Keyes (1995). An adequate methodological tool for diagnosing professional well-being can be a questionnaire “Methods for assessing professional well-being”, tested in the work of Rut (2016). This questionnaire is a modification of the Russian-language version of the questionnaire of psychological well-being of the individual (ZHukovskaya &Troshihina, 2011). The scales of the questionnaire were tested for compliance with the criterial validity and synchronous reliability to the scales of the specified Russian-language version of the questionnaire of Ryff & Keyes (1995). The questionnaire includes six scales: "Professional growth", "Professional goals", "Positive relationships in the team", "Autonomy in professional activities", "Satisfaction with the level of competence", "Satisfaction with professional achievements" (Rut, 2016). Thus, the theoretical basis of the questionnaire is a general psychological idea of the well-being of the specialist as a realization of the desire for personal growth and autonomy in favorable working conditions, specified in the professional sphere.
Based on the study, we can also conclude about the possibility of conceptualization and operationalization, as well as a comprehensive study of the concept of professional well-being based on a combination of subjective and objective approaches. The professional well-being of each employee is a reflection of his views, experiences, ie it is subjective. Professional well-being is directly related to the process of performing professional activities in a particular organizational environment and includes the assessment of this environment by employees. Every employee experiences professional well-being in the context of their own ability to perform professional activities, ie in the context of personal qualities and the possibility of their implementation in professional activities. This makes it possible to use the concept of "subjective professional well-being of the individual" as the most acceptable for assessing the well-being in the professional sphere.
The prospect of further research should be an empirical examination of the relationship between the components of professional well-being with the conditions of the professional environment and personal characteristics of the employee and the development of a model of professional well-being of academic staff in Ukraine. It is also important to consider cultural prejudices in determining professional well-being.
