The national workplace violence survey among industrial workers in Islamic Republic of Iran

According to the definition of the International Labor Organization, violence in the workplace refers to a set of unacceptable behaviors and actions or threats that occur intentionally, individually or repeatedly, resulting in physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm to employees. Workplace violence is a global problem that is expanding in size, and its prevalence is significantly different in different work environments.International studies have shown that workplace violence is related  to the negative mental health consequences such as psychological suffering, anxiety, sleep disorders, chronic fatigue, depression, adjustment disorders, even work-related suicide and even physical complications such as musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The National Mental Health Promotion Document recommends the implementation of a violence prevention program as one of the basic interventions of the first level of prevention. This issue is also emphasized in the National Workerschr('39') Health Program in the country. This highlights the importance of assessing the prevalence of violence in the workplace and the factors that affect it in order to provide the information needed to design and evaluate intervention programs.According to what has been said, the present study was conducted in 2016 in Iran with the aim of determining the prevalence of different types of violence in labor environments in the country and identifying the factors affecting it. 

The present study was a cross-sectional and descriptive study which its implementation sites were industrial units in the country. Based on random cluster sampling, 380 units were selected from the list of all industrial work environments in the country. The sample size was determined to be equal to 400 people in each province with at least 5% alpha, 10% prevalence and 4% accuracy. In three provinces of Tehran, Khorasan Razavi and Isfahan, due to the larger number of workers, the sample size was considered twice as much as other provinces, about 800 people in each of them. Thus, the minimum sample size required for the whole country was 13,600 people. Participants were also selected by random cluster sampling method and the evaluations were done by trained questioners. A two-part questionnaire including background information and a researcher-made questionnaire on the prevalence of various types of violence were used to collect data. Internal consistency method was used to evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire and the calculated Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient was 0.88. Data were collected and analyzed in STATA software version 12. Independent t-test and Chi-square tests were used to investigate the factors affecting violence in the workplace. 

The majority of participants (83%) were male. 26.5% of them were under 30 years old. 81.8% were married and 24.1% had undergraduate education. Based on the results of this study, the prevalence of physical, psychological, sexual and ethnic violence against any individual were 3.9, 14.4, 1.4 and 3.5, and by the individual were 18.7, 24.8, 3.4, respectively. Physical violence against a person had a significant relationship with male gender, shift work, part-time employment status, and contract employment status, but it had no significant relationship with marital status. 

The results of the present study show for the first time the high rates of violence against individuals and by individuals in the working population in the country. These results emphasize the need to design intervention programs to reduce violence in the workplace with a focus on individual and workplace-related factors at the national level.