Studying the Effectiveness of Vocational Empowerment Based on Shafiabady's Multi-Axial Pattern of Vocational Choice (SMPVC) on Job Engagement and Self-Efficacy of Female-Headed Households in Tehran City, Iran

Developments in societies during recent decades have imposed the responsibility of managing life and high–stress levels on women who are the heads of households. Factors such as death, addiction, disability, and migration of the husbands, transfer the family's responsibility to women, which imposes them a lot of insecurities and additional tasks, such as loss of income and dual parenting roles. Many families belong to low socioeconomic classes and suffer from severe economic problems. Therefore, employment and entrepreneurship are necessary for their empowerment. Empowering female heads of the family can improve their mental health and personal and social life. Social support, employment, and entrepreneurship are missing components in women's empowerment. Empowerment of female–headed households is one of the issues that can help improve women's mental health indicators and their personal and social life. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of vocational empowerment based on Shafiabady's Multi–Axial Pattern of Vocational Choice (SMPVC) on job engagement and self–efficacy of female–headed households living in Tehran City, Iran.

The research method was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The statistical population consisted of all female heads of families living in Tehran during 2019. A total of 30 women were selected by the available sampling method and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups (n=15 for each group). The inclusion criteria were being the female head of household, living in Tehran, having consent to participate in the project, not using drugs and psychotropic drugs, lacking mental and personality disorders (based on self–report) or acute and chronic physical illnesses, not participating in other treatment programs at the same time, and not receiving individual counseling or medication. The exclusion criteria of the experimental group included absenteeism for more than two sessions of the intervention and dissatisfaction with participation in the sessions. Vocational empowerment based on SMPVC was administered to the experimental group in eight 90–minute sessions for 2 months. Research tools included the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al., 2002) and the Self– Efficacy Scale (Sherer al., 1982). Data analysis was performed in SPSS software version 24 using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate analysis of covariance, the independent t test, and the Chi–square test). The significance level of the tests was considered 0.05.

The results showed that after controlling the effect of the pretest, there were statistically significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in the mean scores of vocational engagement (p<0.001) and self–efficacy (p<0.001). Also, 50% of the changes in vocational engagement and 53% of changes in self–efficacy were due to the effect of the intervention.

Based on the research findings, SMPVC can be applied to women heads of households and effectively improves their vocational engagement and self–efficacy.