The contemporary world is changing at an amazing pace. Organizations are at the forefront of these developments because of their central role in the development of societies [1]. Hospitals and health care providers are one of the organizations where quality of care is of paramount importance [4,3]. Nurses form a major part of the organization's staff, and since of their greater relationship with patients, they are also responsible for providing quality care to patients. Volunteer behaviors or organizational citizenship behaviors are one of the most important factors that can influence nurses' behaviors, attitudes, and interactions to improve the quality of care provided to patients [7]. Considering the importance of recognizing the impact of demographic characteristics on nurses' organizational citizenship behaviors, the researchers decided to conduct a research to determine the relationship between demographic characteristics and organizational citizenship behaviors of nurses in Hamadan health centers in 2016.

 

This was a descriptive-analytical and correlational study conducted in 2016. The study population (n=955) was all nurses working in different wards of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences (Besat, Shahid Beheshti, Ekbatan, Farshchian and Fatemieh). According to the type of statistical tests, 200 people were using stratified random sampling method. Inclusion criteria were nurses with minimum bachelor's degree, having at least six months of work experience in educational centers and willingness and consent for participating in the study. Data gathering tools were demographic information questionnaire (age, sex, marital status, educational level, work experience) and organizational citizenship behavior questionnaire by Podsakoff et al. The lowest score on the questionnaire was 24 and the highest score was 120. Questions 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 17 were reversed. The mean of the questions was calculated by the questionnaire and then the organizational citizenship behavior of the nurses was interpreted according to the following standard criterion: [unfavorable (1-1.99); relatively unfavorable (2-2.99); ؛ relatively favorable (3-3.99) Favorable (5-4) [17].
The questionnaire was developed by Podsakoff et al. and the internal reliability of the questionnaire for the whole questionnaire was 0.81 and for altruism 0.85, politeness 0.85, Magnanimity 0.85, conscientiousness 0.82, and civic virtue 0.72 [19]. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the nursing faculty members of Hamadan Nursing and Midwifery faculty. To determine the reliability of this questionnaire, the test-retest method was used. The questionnaire was distributed to 20 nurses of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and then two weeks later the same questionnaire was returned to the same subjects and finally they were excluded from the original study. The correlation coefficient between the answers to the questionnaire questions was calculated. This coefficient in answering the questions of Organizational Citizenship Behavior Questionnaire by means of test-retest method for dimensions were as follows: Magnanimity 0.902, conscientiousness 0.813, altruism 0.944, courtesy 0.973, civic virtue 0.884 and total organizational citizenship behavior was 0.956.

The results showed that 40% of nurses were male; 53.5% were married; 84% had a bachelors degree; 63.5% were under 30 years old and 54.5% were under 5 years old. The mean age of the studied nurses was 30.2 ±5.8 years and the minimum age was 22 and maximum 49 years old. Their average work experience was 7.07 5 5.8 years and their minimum work experience was 1 and maximum 24 years (Table 1).
 

Table 1. Distribution of absolute and relative frequency of nurses according to their demographic characteristics

The results showed that the dimension of civic virtue had the lowest average (3.33 /0 0.5) and conscientiousness (4.3 /0 0.5). Organizational citizenship behavior of 59.4% of nurses was in relatively favorable condition and 39.1% was in favorable condition (Table 2).
 

Table 2. Average Organizational Citizenship Behavior of Nurses Based on Interpretation of Organizational Citizenship Behavior Questionnaire

The results showed that although the mean of organizational citizenship behavior of male nurses had higher master's and married degree, in general, nurses' organizational citizenship behavior did not show a significant difference in terms of marital status, gender and educational level (Table 3).
 

Table 3. Comparison of Nurses' Organizational Citizenship Behavior by Gender, Education, and Marital Status (T-Test and ANOVA)

The results also showed that nurses' organizational citizenship behavior was significantly correlated with their age (P<0.005 and r=0.20) and their work experience (P<0.029 and r=0.16) (Table 4).

Table 4. Results of the Pearson correlation test to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics of age and work experience with organizational citizenship behavior

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between demographic characteristics and organizational citizenship behavior of nurses in Hamadan medical education centers in 2016. The findings showed that nurses' organizational citizenship behavior was generally favorable in terms of civic virtue, Magnanimity, and kindness. In the Altuntas and Baykal study, which examined nurses' organizational citizenship behavior and its influencing factors in Turkish hospitals, the results showed that the mean of organizational citizenship behaviors and all its dimensions were higher than the mean of questionnaire norms and were at a relatively desirable level [11]. The reason for the high organizational citizenship behavior in this study can be attributed to the professional nature of nurses. Since nurses are in constant contact with patients, they are constantly working to improve the mental and physical condition of patients, and this requires high-quality behavioral behaviors such as high organizational citizenship behavior.
The results showed that nurses' organizational citizenship behavior had a statistically significant relationship with their age and work experience. The results are in line with the studies of Mayel Afshar et al. which showed that with increasing age and work experience, the level of organizational citizenship behavior of hospital staff increased [34]. The results showed that organizational citizenship behavior had no significant difference with marital status, educational level and gender of nurses in Hamadan health centers. In the Dehghani study, which measured the relationship between social capital and organizational citizenship behavior among staff of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences teaching hospitals, organizational citizenship behavior was not related to marital status and gender, and was only related to education level, which is on the contrary of our results. It has been reported that as people's education levels increase, their organizational citizenship behavior declines [24].

 

The results showed that organizational citizenship behavior of nurses in educational hospitals of Hamadan is relatively favorable. This finding may indicate that thinking about appropriate management strategies can be effective in achieving favorable organizational citizenship behavior among nurses. The results also showed that nurses' organizational citizenship behavior has a positive and significant relationship with demographic characteristics of their age and work experience. As the age of nurses increases, so does their organizational citizenship behavior. Therefore, the need to pay more attention to younger staff, as well as providing them with supportive and encouraging training, can internalize these behaviors, and by utilizing these trainings in the future, we will see these nurse practitioners increase and implement their behaviors in hospitals.

 

This article is a part of a Master's Thesis approved by 9404091980 and Code of Ethics 45,1394UMSHA.REC. 4/4/94 Hamadan University of Medical Sciences Research and Technology. The researchers would like to express their gratitude to all the nurses of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences who contributed to this study.

 

The authors declared no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.