Abstract
Discrimination is an actual social issue nowadays, and one of the aspects where discrimination can significant impact human well-being is workplace. Workplace discrimination problems can have an impact on the overall happiness and life satisfaction of a person. There have been not much research on this subject, and the goal of this experiment is to determine whether there exists a significant relationship between the level of general happiness and personal workplace discrimination estimates basing on race, age and gender. Data of General Social Survey 2010 were used. Results showed that no statistically significant relationship was determined between workplace discrimination by race, age and gender. For logistic regression, 76.6% of cases were excluded, and the lack of responses which led to this exclusion has most likely conditioned the fact that null hypothesis could not be rejected.
Introduction
In today’s society, democratic values and rights of people are gaining high value all over the world. One of the important obstacles for equal treatment of people and for maintaining human rights is discrimination ”“ prejudiced treatment of people basing on their race, ethnicity, gender, age or belonging to any other specific group of people. Due to discrimination, various opportunities in life and work are either offered or prohibited to different people. Most common discrimination issues emerge due to ethic and racial differences, nationality-based discrimination, gender discrimination and religious discrimination. Age-based discrimination is also an issue for certain age groups, especially for job seekers.
There exist direct and indirect manifestations of discrimination. Direct discrimination takes place when a particular person of group of people are treated in a different way due to their gender, race, age or religion. In many countries, there exist state policies and laws against discrimination in education, employment and other spheres of human life, so the manifestations of direct discrimination are becoming less frequent, at least in developed countries.
There also exists indirect discrimination, when there is no visible limitation of rights or possibilities, but the conditions provided by an organization or by certain people of power create obstacles for particular social groups, or create adverse effects for them. There also exist subtle forms of discriminations expressed in communication, treatment and overall attitude to people belonging to a particular social group.
Discrimination is an important social problem, and it can significantly affect life and well-being of persons being discriminated against, making life more difficult for such people, and reducing their level of life satisfaction and happiness. The purpose of this research is to find out how different aspects of discrimination in the workplace, namely: discrimination by age, gender and race, can affect overall level of happiness of an individual. Data source for the research was General Social Survey 2010.
Independent variables in this research are workplace discrimination based on race, workplace discrimination based on gender and workplace discrimination based on age. All these three variables are binary (either “1” ”“ “yes” or “0” ”“ “no” responses). The dependent variable is the overall level of happiness, also expressed as a binary variable with “1” ”“ “yes” or “0” ”“ “no” responses.
Null hypothesis of this research is the following: there is no statistically significant relationship between overall happiness and discrimination by gender, age and race in the workplace. Alternative hypothesis: there is a statistically significant relationship between overall happiness and discrimination by gender, age and race in the workplace.
Methods
Sampling
The source of data used to get the statistical information on overall happiness level, and discrimination in the workplace by gender, age and race, was General Social Survey 2010. This survey is held twice a year, and represents a questionnaire including standard demographic variables, variables measuring attitudes and variables acting as social indicators. For GSS 2010, modified probability sampling was used, with a multi-stage probability sample for different blocks and areas, and quota sampling for each block basing on age, gender and employment status.