Achievement Addiction Among Employees

Abstract

The current study addressed achievement addiction, defined by Robinson (1999) as "a state of excessive preoccupation with achievement and immersion in it, which can lead to harm to the addict's health and relationships. This can also lead to feelings of anxiety and stress when set goals are not achieved, feelings of failure and frustration when not achieving excellence in all aspects, sacrificing human relationships and free time for the sake of work and achieving success, and feelings of confusion and psychological exhaustion as a result of the pressure imposed by the desire to achieve." Accordingly, the current study aimed to:

1. Identify achievement addiction among employees.


2. Identify differences in achievement addiction according to gender (males/females).

In light of previous studies, the researchers prepared (34) items distributed across four domains: feelings of anxiety and stress when not achieving set goals, feelings of failure and frustration when not achieving excellence in all aspects, sacrificing human relationships and free time for the sake of work and achieving success, and feelings of confusion and psychological exhaustion as a result of the pressure imposed by the desire to achieve. The scale was presented to a group of experts. In the psychological and educational sciences, to ensure that the scale's items measured what it was designed for, all items were accepted, thus achieving the apparent validity of the scale. Discriminatory power and internal consistency were calculated after applying it to the discriminatory research sample. The reliability of the scale was extracted using the split-half method and Cronbach's alpha. The reliability of the scale was achieved, with the reliability coefficients using the split-half method reaching 0.88, while the reliability coefficient using the Cronbach's alpha method reached 0.83. These reliability coefficients are considered acceptable. Thus, the scale in its final form consisted of 32 items after deleting two items for discrimination. After applying the scale to the researcher's initial sample, which numbered (250) employees from the Ministry of Planning, the College of Basic Education, and the Ministry of Education, they were distributed according to the gender variable, with the number of females reaching (133), while the number of males reached (117). After applying the scale and conducting statistical analysis according to the objectives, the researchers reached the following results:

1. There is a statistically significant difference in achievement addiction in favor of the sample average.


2. There is no statistically significant difference in achievement addiction between males and females.