Dear colleagues,
I am planning an empirical research on stress in teachers. The question I face is: how to differentiate the causes of stress in teachers? How to understand, if the high levels of stress anxiety and depression are causes by occupational stress or by other stress factors (family factors, interpersonal or intrapersonal conflicts, developmental crisis, etc.). Should I include all these questions in the questionnaire? Is it possible to separate occupational stress from external influences?
Determining whether stressors lead to strain or the opposite is not a simple matter, and gets into the nature of causal inference. Below are cites to two papers. We have one that deals with the issue of determining underlying processes, and it contains references that might be helpful. Kraemer et al. is helpful in thinking about demonstrating causality by establishing three levels of connection: Mere correlation, prediction over time, and manipulating one to show effects on the other.
Kraemer, H. C., Stice, E., Kazdin, A., Offord, D., & Kupfer, D. (2001). How do risk factors work together? Mediators, moderators, and independent, overlapping, and proxy risk factors. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(6), 848-856. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.158.6.848
Spector, P. E., & Meier, L. L. (2014). Methodologies for the study of organizational behavior processes: How to find your keys in the dark. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(8), 1109-1119. doi:10.1002/job.1966
Thank you very much for the links, Paul. I've downloaded the articles and look forward to reading them!
The questionnaire must contain questions related to work stress.
this data can be compared with home tutors and regular teachers having same working hours.
Thank you, Divya! Do you think that questionnaire should include questions related to stress in the family?