Occupational stress and its risk factors among primary school teachers in Melaka Tengah district, Melaka: article

This study was conducted to evaluate the occupational stress level and its risk factors among primary school teachers in Melaka Tengah District, Melaka. A total of 175 primary school teachers (N = 175) from five primary schools in the districts were randomly selected to be involved in this study. The questionnaires used consist of three factors representing the main sources of teacher stress, specifically workload, students’ misbehavior, and interpersonal relationship. The research instrument used is Teacher Stress Inventory formed by Boyle et al. (1995) which has been modified by Mokhtar (1998), Mazlan (2002) and also the researchers themselves. A pilot study was conducted among 50 primary school teachers in the same districts. The Alpha Cronbach for the instrument used in this study is 0.97. The data were performed descriptively (mean, frequency and percentage) and inferency (Pearson-Correlation Test and Independent TTest) methods. Results indicate that the overall occupational stress level is at medium level. Among the three factors, students’ misbehavior is the strongest determinant of teacher stress with a mean of 2.93. Other factors are workload (mean = 2.12) at low level and interpersonal relationships (mean = 2.42) at medium level respectively. The result additionally indicates that there is no significant difference of occupational stress among the respondents based on gender. Furthermore, the result of this study failed to indicate a significant correlation between occupational stress among primary school teachers and demographic factors such as age.