Determining the Effectiveness of Ontological Education Based on Giddens' Theory on Job Alienation and Job Burnout in Male Prison Staff

Prison staff faces a lot of pressure and tension due to their relationship with prisoners and criminals, which this factor led to increases their job burnout and job alienation. These two structures reduce employee performance and job and organizational effectiveness. Job burnout refers to job–related psychological trauma such as emotional exhaustion, loss of personality traits, and decreased personal success. Also, job alienation refers to differences in the nature of the job role and human nature or differences in job realities and personal preferences. One of the ways to improve job characteristics is the method of ontological education and ontology is one of the main areas studied in Giddens sociological perspective (2000) in response to the materialist, consumerist approaches and disregard for genuine human concerns. The present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of ontological education based on Giddens' theory on job alienation and burnout in male prison staff.

This study was quasi–experimental with a pretest–posttest design with a control group. The research population was the staff of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer–Ahmad Province prisons in 2018. The sample of this study was 30 qualified people of prison staff who after reviewing the inclusion criteria were selected by purposive sampling. The inclusion criteria were as follows: having job problems based on the interview by the researcher, aged 26 to 55 years, minimum diploma education, being married, willingness to participate in research, no history of receiving ontological education, and not using other treatment methods simultaneously. The exclusion criteria were as follows: unwillingness to continue treatment and absence of more than one session or delay in more than three sessions. The samples are randomly placed into two equal groups. The experimental group received ten 60–minute sessions (one session per week) of ontological education based on Giddens' theory and the control group did not receive any education. The intervention was performed by the first researcher with the help of an experienced research colleague with a PhD degree in clinical psychology in the training hall of one of the prisons. The content of ontological education was prepared by researchers based on Giddens' theory (2000) and approved by five faculty members of the Islamic Azad University of Isfahan (Khorasgan) and Yasuj branches and Iran University of Medical Sciences. The study groups in the pretest and posttest stages answered the Job Alienation Questionnaire (Boeree, 2001) and Job Burnout Questionnaire (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). The obtained data were analyzed by the Chi–square test, independent t test and univariate analysis of covariance in SPSS–23 software at the significance level of 0.05.

Based on the Chi–square test results, the experimental and control groups were not significantly different in terms of education level (p=0.396), age range (p=0.129), organizational position (p=1.000), and work experience (p=0.309). Also, based on independent t test results, the experimental and control groups in the pretest stage were not significantly different in the variables of job alienation (p=0.328) and job burnout (p=0.779). However, in the posttest stage, they were significantly different in both variables of job alienation (p<0.001) and job burnout (p<0.001). In addition, the results of univariate analysis of covariance showed that after eliminating the effect of the pretest, the experimental group and the control group had a significant difference in the posttest stage in terms of job alienation (p<0.001) and job burnout variables (p<0.001). According to the effect size, 87% of the changes in job alienation and 89% of the changes in job burnout resulted from the ontological training.

According to the results of this study, ontological education based on Giddens' theory had an effective role in reducing job alienation and job burnout of male prison staff. Therefore, prison counselors and psychologists can use ontological education to improve the job characteristics of male prison staff.