Research into features of personality in health care professionals in the area of voluntary work

Volunteering is an activity that develops in a personal, spontaneous, free, without personal benefits. This is offered by individual citizens, individually or through organizations. Aim: The aim of the present study was to investigate the features of personality for health professionals to volunteering. Methodology: The data collection was done by completing a written questionnaire in time and place of participants’ choice. The tools used were: (a) Questionnaire of socio-demographic characteristics, (b) the Altruism Scale, (c) the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and (d) the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS (18) statistical package. Results: In this study involved 110 doctors and nurses of Sparta General Hospital (overall study sample), 64.2% of the sample were male, 57.3% were married, 37.7% were tertiary education graduates, while 99.1% had the Greek ethnicity. Results showed that the mean value of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory in women was (7.8) while in men was (11.4). At this point Independent Sample t-test showed statistically significant difference to the mean value of the NPI between women and men t = 2.470 p =0.017. Regarding to volunteering, the mean values of Narcissistic Personality Inventory showed statistically significant difference between those who had participate in a voluntary effort and those you hadn’t (t-test = 2.2927 & p-value = 0.004). Independent Sample t-test showed statistically significant difference to the mean value of the NPI between the marital status groups but in significance level of 10% (t-test = 1.927 & p-value = 0.071). Conclusions: The results of this study highlight the relationship between specific personality traits with volunteering. According to the results, there appear to be some evidence that individuals, who have participated in a voluntary effort, are people with a high sense of altruism, present low score in the scale of narcissistic personality and a high score in the scale of personality. Moreover, there is evidence that gender, marital status, educational level and job play a role in shaping the three personality scales. Note, however, that the results are statistically significant.

Keywords: Altruism, happiness, narcissism, voluntary work, healthcare professionals