Relationship between personality traits, job satisfaction, and job involvement among Taiwanese community health volunteers.

OBJECTIVE: To understand the relationship between job involvement, job satisfaction, and personality traits among health volunteers in one Taiwan community. It is not easy to retain voluntary workers as part of health programs even though they have been trained. Previous research has shown that in order to increase job involvement, volunteers must effectively fulfill their needs to achieve and obtain job satisfaction. DESIGN AND SAMPLE: Cross-sectional design. Surveys were mailed to 317 health volunteers at community health centers in I-lan County, northern Taiwan; 213 complete responses (67%) were received.
METHODS: The survey instrument included sociodemographic items and scales measuring locus of control, achievement orientation, job involvement, and job satisfaction.
RESULTS: Most respondents (94.8%) were female and their average age was 49.6 years. In terms of personality traits, most volunteers showed internal control orientation. Explainable variance for the prediction of job involvement from a combination of participation frequency, on-job training, achievement orientation, and job satisfaction was 33.6%.
CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that there is a need to strengthen cooperative relationships among volunteers by initiating well-planned volunteer training programs and growth groups. These should involve the empowerment concept with the aim of enhancing the volunteers' interpersonal relationships and job satisfaction.