Determinants of Occupational Commitment of Dental Hygienists

치과위생사의 직업몰입 영향요인 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the occupational commitment of dental hygienists in Korea. The independent variables contain three groups of work rewards variables which consist of task reward variables (autonomy, job significance, resource adequacy, role conflict, workload, and routinization), social reward variables(supervisory support, co-worker support, and negative affectivity), and organizational reward variables(job security and promotional chances), and eight sociodemographic variables. The sample of this study consisted of 474 dental hygienists who work at general hospitals, university hospitals, dental hospitals and clinics across the nation. Data were collected with self-administered questionnaires and analyzed using hierarchical regression technique. It was found that: (1) job significance have a significant positive effect on the occupational commitment of dental hygienists; (2) role conflict, workload, routinization, and type of work site have significant negative effect on the occupational commitment of dental hygienists; (3) the study model explains 23.7% of the variance in occupational commitment among dental hygienists. The results of the study indicate that managers of dental clinics and hospitals should make efforts to extend the scope and quality of dental hygienists' work through job enlargement and job enrichment.