engleski

Psychological and financial deprivation and well-being of unemployed: Does level of education moderate relationship?

Many studies have shown that unemployment has an adverse effect on the psychological wellbeing of the jobless individual. Two confronted theories have been proposed to account for the negative impact of unemployment on psychological health: Jahoda's latent deprivation model (1981) and Fryer's agency restriction model (1986). According to Jahoda, it is the psychological deprivation (unsatisfied psychological needs associated with employment) that causes disturbances in psychological health. To the contrary, Fryer considers the loss of income (financial deprivation) to be the core negative consequence of unemployment. It reduces psychological health by impoverishing, restricting and discouraging one's agency. Recent studies have shown that the two models are more complementary than contrary in explaining negative psychological consequences of unemployment (e.g. Creed and Macintyre, 2001 ; Creed and Watson, 2003 ; Galić, Nekić and Šverko, 2005). However, since unemployed are a very heterogeneous group, we can assume that relative contribution of these variables in explaining psychological health differs for various subgroups of unemployed. Level of education of unemployed is one of potential moderator variables. The aim of this study was to test whether level of education moderates relationship of psychological and financial deprivation with psychological health of unemployed. The data were collected in 26 branch offices of Croatian Employment Bureau on representative sample of the unemployed in Croatia (N=1138). In order to check moderating role of education participants were divided into three subgroups: primary school education (N1=174), high school (N2=762) and university degree (N3=196). The results of our analysis have shown that in all three subgroups psychological and financial deprivation have significant negative correlations with psychological health. Relative contribution of these variables in explaining psychological health differs for subgroups differing in the level of education. Proportion of variance in psychological health accounted by psychological deprivation is larger for better educated people. In other words, unsatisfied psychological needs associated with employment stronger predict problems in psychological health for people with higher level of education. The moderating role of the level of education on the relationship between financial deprivation and psychological health is less clear although correlation between the two variables is the lowest for unemployed with university degree. These results indicate that the negative effects of unemployment for unemployed with different level of education could be caused by different factors. Results will be discussed in the context of well-being models and motivation theories.

psychological deprivation; financial deprivation; psychological health; level of education

nije evidentirano