A structural equation model relating unemployment stress, spiritual intelligence, and mental health components: Mediators of coping mechanism

• Author: Boshra A. Arnout
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2025
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Published date: 01 May 2020

ACADEMIC PAPER

A structural equation model relating unemployment stress,

spiritual intelligence, and mental health components: Mediators

of coping mechanism

Boshra A. Arnout

1,2

1

Department of Psychology, King Khalid

University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

2

Department of Psychology, Zagazig

University, Zagazig, Egypt

Correspondence

Department of Psychology, King Khalid

University, Zagazig University, Zagazig, 44519,

Egypt.

Email: prof.arnout74@gmail.com

This study aimed to evaluate a hypothesized structural model that reflects the

relationship between unemployment stress, spiritual intelligence and mental health

components. The sample of the study consisted of (761) unemployed adults (412

males and 349 females), their ages ranged between 30 to 48 year. They were divided

into two samples: the first consisted of (352) unemployed adults to test the validity

and reliability of the scales used in this study. And the second sample consisted of

(409) unemployed adults to evaluate the hypothesized structural model. Researcher

prepared the unemployment stress scale, and used the spiritual intelligence scale‐27,

as well as prepared the short version of the mental health components scale

based on the mental health scale‐50. In order to find how unemployment stress

and spiritual intelligence predict the mental health components, the hypothesized

model was examined using structural equation modeling. The results of test the

proposed structural model concluded that the independent variable: unemployment

stress contributed statistically significant directly to predict of the five dimensions

of mental health components: mental mindfulness, flexibility, self‐efficiency, social

support and happiness as dependent variables. At the same time, the independent

variable: unemployment stress contributed statistically significant indirectly and

proportionally to the prediction of the five dimensions of mental health as dependent

variables through the dimensions of spiritual intelligence: spiritual mindfulness,

spiritual abilities, spiritual presence as median variables. The proposed model of

unemployment stress, spiritual intelligence and mental health components has a

good fitness with the data were collected, and able to predict mental health among

unemployed adults.

1|INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND

Work is necessary for individuals. It achieves several psychological

functions, the most important of which are organizing time,

establishing social relations, achieving goals, self‐actualization, a sense

of importance, and identity formation. Hence, joblessness does not

achieve the necessary psychological functions for individuals, which

inevitably results in a sense of lack of belonging, isolation, and

difficulty of social harmony (Arnout, 2008). Thus, according to the

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited.

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Received: 14 August 2019 Revised: 24 August 2019 Accepted: 2 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2025

J Public Affairs. 2019;e2025.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2025

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of14

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2025. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1 of 14

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2025