Occupational Stress And Functioning Among Women Elementary School Teachers: A Model Including Personality Traits, Coping, Social Support And Life Stress

In this study, a comprehensive questionnaire was developed and sent to a random sample, stratified by age and marital status, of 1160 women elementary school teachers in Ontario. The data derived from their responses provide a description of occupational stressors, social support structures, personality traits, coping mechanisms, major life events and health status for women elementary school teachers in Ontario. The relationships between occupational stress and physical and mental dysfunction, job satisfaction and job effectiveness were also examined within the context of a model that includes these other variables.;Occupational stressors are related to mental dysfunction, symptoms, job satisfaction and job effectiveness but not to chronic conditions or illness-related behaviour like missing work or seeking treatment. Personality, social support, coping and life events are all related to either occupational stressors or dysfunction but there is little support for the kinds of interactive effects that would suggest an exacerbating or buffering effect of any of these variables with occupational stressors.;The findings also highlight the complexity of the stress process when multivariate analysis techniques are used to examine all of the variables in the model together. When they are all examined jointly the associations among the independent variables change their relationships with the dependent variables. These findings reinforce the need for clearer conceptualization and measurement within the stress research area