Career Resilience of Workers with Hearing Impairment in the East Coast States of Peninsular Malaysia

This study was aimed to study the factor of career resilience among people with hearing impairments who work in the East Coast States of Peninsular Malaysia. There were 166 samples (101 male, 65 female) involved in this study. The selection of the study’s sample used purposeful sampling technique. The set of questionnaires that was distributed was Career Resilience for Adults with Disabilities Scale (CRADS). The data collected were analysed using SPSS Version 23.0 ( Statistical Package for Social Science ) and the findings of the study were analysed using the descriptive statistic which includes frequency tabulation, percentages, mean and standard deviation, as well as inferential analysis using t-test and ANOVA to observe the differences of the career resilience among workers with hearing impairment by gender and marital status. The t-test analysis showed a significant difference between the career resilience factor among the workers with hearing impairment by gender with the t-value= -1.198 and the significance level p=.042. While, the value of F(165) =.170,p>.05 indicated there was no significant differences between the group of marital status.


Introduction
Career is one of the essentials in our life as human.Yet, people with disability often confronted with various challenges related to career such as high rate of unemployability, jobless, and lack of basic amenities to work (Schley et al., 2011).Therefore, this study focused on the workers with hearing impairment and their career resilience.Resilience occurs when an individual confronts with difficulties or bad experiences and try to bounce back without interfering with mental health, behaviours or performances (Luthar & Zigler, 1991).There are groups of people with hearing impairment has low self-resilience since small due to the way of their family's up-bringing which is less helpful for them to form their identity and selfconfidence such as, lack of teaching or two ways of communication in the family which is no sign language (Listman et al., 2011) which causes the individual to continuously feel isolated and exist in their very own world (Steinberg, 2000).The feeling of insecure has obstruct themselves until it affects them negatively in their ambition, career and job (Hendey & Pascall, 2001).In current era of technology, career resilience is essential in each of the worker to help them developing their career regardless of normal individual or individual with disability.Thus, people with disabilities need to be given attentions and assistances so they can contribute to the development of the nation and has the equal functionality as the other normal people (Drucker, 1942;Jaafar et al., 2017).

Literature Study Career Resilience
Career resilience is the ability to adapt with changing circumstances (London, 1993), psychological characteristic which assist an individual in confronting risk and enhances career development (Kodama, 2015), the ability to sustain work balance in difficult and challenging periods (Jackson et al., 2007) and the combination of self-belief with ignorance trait as the source of career success (Fourie & Van Vuuren, 1998).An individual's biology is not a label that indicates a weak or strong individual.Yet, the culture and society has viewed the disabled people as a person with disease, difficult and need to be treated (Conyers, 2003;Hartley, 2012;Longmore & Umansky, 2001;Smart, 2009) which often causes this group of people to be suppressed.Due to this, people with disabilities confront challenges in terms of learning, jobs, medicals, social, attitudes and surroundings.These conditions become the main obstacle for them to fully participate in life (Hartley, 2012;Hartley & Tarvydas, 2013;Smart, 2009).Therefore, resilience is a suitable and needed construct for everyone with disabilities (Hartley, 2010;Miller, 2003;White et al., 2008White et al., , 2010)).This is due to various changes existed based on their experiences.For example, they need to learn and adapt, as well as overcoming matters such as (a) their disabilities; (b) changes in self-functions; (c) negative thoughts and feelings are parts of self-adaptation process; (d) social and attitude challenges; (e) feelings related to sense of loss and deficiency; (f) injustice and discrimination experiences; and (g) lack of access and facilities in better services, housings or jobs (Marini et al., 2012;Smart, 2009).Previous studies found that people with disabilities face difficulties to sustain existence and stability in jobs (Khor, 2002).The atmosphere at workplace and current changes have caused employers to set stricter conditions to the candidates such as the balance of academic certificates with skills which causes difficulties for the applicants among the people with disabilities for job opportunities (Melissa et al., 2011).At the workplace, resilience is associated with positive outcomes (Jackson et al., 2007;Youssef & Luthans, 2007), employeeemployer relations (Luthans et al., 2007;Luthans et al., 2005) and cooperation among colleagues (Jung & Yoon, 2015).

People with Hearing Impairment
People with disabilities refers to the prolonged disabilities in terms of physical, mental, intellectual or senses in which when interacted with various challenges can obstruct their full and effective participation in the society (Persons with Disabilities Act, 2008).While people with hearing impairment are among those who cannot hear with clarity on both ears without hearing aids or not able to hear at all even though using hearing aids (Dash, 2000).There are four levels of people with hearing impairments (Dash, 2000;Department of Social Welfare, 2022), which are: i) minimum, ii) moderate, iii) severe and iv) profound.In the context of this study, all samples used Malaysian Sign Language (MSL).MSL is a form of communication used by persons with hearing impairment in translating the meaning of phrases conveyed and an official communication for persons with hearing impairment in Malaysia (Lim, 2006) and becomes the identity symbol for persons with hearing impairment in Malaysia (Shaari, 2004).
This research was aimed to study the career resilience factor of workers with hearing impairment who work in the east coast states in Peninsular Malaysia.Based on this aim, the questions and hypothesis of the study are as follows: What is the demographic profile of workers with hearing impairment in terms of career resilience by gender? 2.
Are there any significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with hearing impairment by gender? 3.
Are there any significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with hearing impairments by marital status?

Hypothesis
= There is a significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with 1 Ha hearing impairment by gender.= There is a significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with 2 Ha hearing impairment by marital status

Research Method
The study population were 166 workers with hearing impairment who work in the East Coast States of Peninsular Malaysia: Terengganu, Pahang, and Kelantan.Quantitative approach and survey design were used in this study.Purposive sampling technique was chosen based on the criteria set before the data collection in which samples present during the meetings, works in any of these three East Coast states, and able to use sign language.
Career Resilience for Adults with Disabilities Scale (CRADS) has been used as a questionnaire in this study.This questionnaire developed by Masten (2001); Luthan et al ( 2006) consist of 13 items with five Likert Scales.Scale 0 means Strongly Disagree, and Scale 4 means Strongly Agree.The scoring of the questionnaire instruments was conducted by totaling all items.Score that was more than 30 is regarded as having high level of career resilience.During the questionnaire answering session, Sign Language interpreter was used to ease the process of data collection process.

Research Findings and Discussion Demographic Profile of Workers with Hearing Impairment in East Coast States
The discussed demographic profile of workers with hearing impairment were the numbers of samples by state, gender, race, age, and marital status.Based on Table 3, it was found that t-value for the comparison of career resilience level between male and female was t=-1.198 and level of significance was p=.042.The significance level was smaller than 0.05.Thus, Ha1: There is a significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with hearing impairment by gender is accepted.

Results of t-test analysis of independent samples of career resilience by gender of employees with hearing impairment
Various previous study had found that female employees are gaining more support from the employers and colleagues of same gender at workplace.Social support and quality interpersonal relationship are more showed towards the female employees such as advice consultation, teaching, and protection (Flach, 1997;Jackson et al., 2007;Kossek & Perrigino, 2016;Powley 2009;Stephens et al., 2013;Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004).Other than that, the positive thinking habits also helps in sustaining the sense of well-being (Aked et al., 2008) and contributes to the resilience consolidation (Cooper et al., 2013).

Results of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of Career Resilience among Employees with Hearing Impairment by Marital Status
Table 4 portrayed the score for career resilience of three groups and Analysis of Variants (ANOVA) of career resilience of employees with hearing impairment by marital status.In this study, it has been shown that employees with hearing impairment have career resilience regardless their marital status of single, married or divorcee/widow.Marital status is associated with longer age and better health on men and women (Waite, 1995).Marriage connects an individual with other individuals and other social institutions (Stolzenberg et al., 1995).
The capability of employees with hearing impairment in adapting and experiencing their selffunctions at the workplace has caused their resilience increased regardless of their marital status.The implication of this study is beneficial for employers and employees to cooperate better in an organisation.Unmarried employees will not be burden with marriage issue at early stage of their career.Similarly, with those who plans to have children will not have to think of the negative effects on their career once they have children.The employers as well will be fairer on their employees regardless of their marital status.

Conclusion
As a conclusion, this study explains on the gender of an individual influence their career resilience due to the moral supports from the colleagues.However, as for marital status, there is no significant differences of the career resilience among the employees with hearing impairment by marital status.Therefore, to increase further the career resilience of the employees with hearing impairment, various parties play their roles such as counsellor, employers, parents, associations, and colleagues.If all parties work together to rebuild their resilience within themselves, the career of the employees with disabilities will be at par with the other normal groups.
Nevertheless, this study should not be a generalisation for all population of persons with hearing impairment in the whole Malaysia as the samples of this study involved those who work and registered with the society in the East Coast states of Peninsular Malaysia only.Therefore, it is recommended for the future studies to widen the scope within the whole Malaysia.Other than that, it is also recommended to involve individuals with different disabilities.This study gives implication towards the employers specifically to believe in the ability of persons with disabilities by providing equal job opportunities to both persons with hearing impairment and other group of disabilities.

Acknowledgement
Thanks are to all people who were directly or indirectly involved especially Malaysian Deaf Association and Sign Language's Expert always provided excellent cooperation in this study.

Corresponding Author
Norhafisah Abd Rahman Faculty of Leadership and Management, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia Email: fisa_rahman@yahoo.com Table 1 below indicated the level of hearing for people with hearing impairment.

Table 3
Career Resilience Level among Employees with Hearing Impairment by Gender

Table 4
Score of Career Resilience for Three GroupsTable of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicated there was no significant differences between groups of marital status; Single, Married and Divorcee/Widow with F(165) =.170,p>.05.This means there was no significant differences for the score of career resilience for Single, Married, and Divorcee/Widow groups, in which each group has parallel career resilience level among each other.Thus, Ha2 There is a significant differences of career resilience factor among persons with hearing impairment by marital status is rejected.