Investigating the relationship between religious beliefs and elementary teacher′s happiness in the working environment

Aim: This study was aimed at investigating the relationship between religious beliefs and elementary teacher′s happiness in the working environment. This was a descriptive-correlation study. Methods: The population under study was consisted of all the elementary teachers of district 2 of ministry of education and training during the academic year of 2013-2014. Using Cochrane′s volume sampling, a number of 250 elementary teachers was chosen from the population of teachers (a number of 690 teachers). Two types of questionnaires were used to elicit data, the questionnaire of vision assessment (by Serajzadeh), and Oxford happiness (by Argyle). SPSS 19 was used for the both levels of descriptive (such as frequency, mean, percentage, and standard deviation) and inferential (such as Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and MANOVA) statistics. Result: The results of the study showed that there is a significant relationship between elementary teacher′s happiness and their religious beliefs (r = 0.241, P < 0.001). There also existed a significant relationship between faith (one of the aspects of religious beliefs) and happiness (r = 0.01, P < 0.05). The other significant relationships of the aspects of religious belief and happiness were for the outcome aspect (r = 0.034, P < 0.005), rite aspect (r = 0.01, P < 0.05), and the experimental aspect of religious beliefs (r = 0.017, P < 0.05). Conclusion: Result showed that there is no significant relationship between the rite aspect of religious belief and happiness based on gender, working experience, educational background/level, and type of school. In contrast, there is a significant relationship between religious beliefs and age