Investigating Factor Structure of Islamic and Protestant Work Ethics in Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factor structure of work ethics in students. To this end, 715 students from universities of Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Islamic Azad, Persian Gulf, Isfahan, Lorestan, Bojnourd, Hamedan Alvand and Hamedan Ganjnameh participated in the research and completed the research questionnaires. The principal components exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation on Protestant work ethic items and principal axis factoring exploratory factors analysis with promax rotation on Islamic work ethic items confirmed the five-factor and the six-factor solutions, respectively. The factor analysis on the 65 items of protestant work ethic revealed that the five-factor solution explained about 45% of the variance of data, and based on the content of items loaded on each factor, the factors were labeled as follow: hard work, work centrality, leisure time, self-reliance, and morality. Factor analysis on 43 Islamic work ethic items found that the six-factor solution explains about 44% of the variance of data, and according to the content of the items loaded on each factor, the factors were labeled as: centrality of work / Hard work, work and community / justice, cooperation and consultation, importance of work, importance of production and economic activities, and avoiding waste of time. The correlation coefficients between the obtained dimensions confirmed the relative independence of the factors. In addition, both Islamic and Protestant work ethics questionnaires had a high degree of internal consistency. Overall, the results showed that Islamic work ethic and protestant work ethics are multi-dimensional structures.