A structural equation model describes factors contributing teachers' job stress in primary schools

Abstract

The job stress model was developed by Boyle, Borg, Falzon, and Jr. (1995) with 20 items in five (5) dimensions named workloads, professional recognition, students' misbehaviour, time and resource constraint, as well as peer relationship. A study was carried out later by Collie, Shapka, and Perry (2012) using the same items as proposed by Boyle et al. (1995), with one (1) additional four (4) items dimension named technology. The aim of this particular study was to re-examine and re-confirm that the measurement model for job stress construct with the respective dimensions and items would hold for teachers in the primary schools setting in Kelantan, Malaysia. Thus, this study employed confirmatory factor analysis to achieve the objective. As a result, this study proposed a measurement model which described factors contributing primary school teachers' job stress with eight (8) dimensions, namely T1 (students misbehaviour), T2 (workloads), T3 (professional recognition), T4 (time and resource constraint), T5 (interpersonal relationship), T6 (training and support towards technology), T7 (curriculum facilities and exposure constraints) and T8 (technology literacy). This model evaluated its construct validity by estimating both convergent and discriminant validity, while evaluating the internal consistency of the proposed model itself, and estimates how the instrument determines the reasonable relations among the latent factors mentioned above, and how it describes the reasonable results and assigns the quality of data fit within it. The specific model can be used by researchers to evaluate the effect of different aspects of job stress in the education institutions.