Organizational commitment of health surveillance workers in municipalities of the state of Goiás, Brazil

This is a field study, with a quantitative approach, on the level of organizational commitment among municipal health surveillance inspectors. An analysis was made of possible differences between the sample groups, which were divided according to their sociodemographic characteristic s. The study included 335 inspectors from 53 Goiás, Brazil, municipalities, who responded to the 2011 Organizational Commitment Scale Bases. The scale covers seven different types of ties that employees have with the institutions they work for, as well as personal and professional data. The analyses were descriptive, variance, and chi-square tests. Noted were a high affective commitment and high sense of obligation for job performance, low feelings of affiliation and obligation to continue working in municipal health surveillance, in addition to differences between groups when the individual and professional characteristics were taken into account. The area's public managers should pay attention to the importance of human resources in the development of public policies and prioritize actions that result in high levels of commitment among these professionals.