Violencia psicológica en el trabajométodos de evaluación y variables sociodemográficas relevantes

Abstract

This doctoral thesis examines the presence of psychological harassment (mobbing), sexual harassment and burnout in a sample of 1730 workers of the Valecian Community. In the research different methods have been used for the assessment of violence and burnout. We contrasted the results obtained with the different methods and we put them into relation with a number of social-labour characteristics of interest such as firm size, age, type of company, gender of the harasser and gender of the victim or the status held in the company by the harasser. Results show that the type of company (public versus private) and victim's gender (male versus female) are not related to the same degree of psychological harassment, while the age and company size (large versus small) of the workers who reported having been victims of harassment were related. With respect to sexual harassment and social-labour variables, we only found differences in the gender of the victims, thus women reported themselves to be victims of sexual harassment to a greater extend than men. When we refer to the status of the perpetrator and the victim's gender, men are harassed by people who occupy a similar to their position in the occupational hierarchy while when the victim is a woman, harassment comes most often from people who occupy a higher hierarchical position. With regard to burnout, we found the type of company and the victim's gender not to be related to the greater or lesser presence of burnout. Finally, with respect to age, we found that older people reported having experienced more burnout, and, with regard to the size of company in which the victim works, we found this syndrome to be the more common presented in small firms. This study also provides interesting information about the social variables mentioned, as well as the gender and status of the harasser.