Correlates of Stress Among Secondary School Teachers in Penang

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors which cause stress among secondary school teachers in Georgetown, Penang and factors that they perceived as
most stressful. This study also investigated the degree or levels of stress and the manifestations of stress. A sample size of 80% was taken from nine secondary schools in Georgetown, Penang. A total of 348 questionnaires were distributed and a response rate of about 75% (260 questionnaires) was obtained. However, out of the 260 questionnaires returned, 249 were usable. Of the 249 respondents, 65 were males and 184 were females. About 55% of the respondents were below 40 years old and about 61% of
the respondents have been in the teaching profession for more than 10 years. A self-constructed 51-items questionnaire was used to investigate the correlates of
stress among secondary school teachers. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the respondents demographic factors, Inferential statistics technique such as the t-
Test, Anova (One Way Analysis Of Variance), Pearson Correlation Analysis and Stepwise Regression Analysis were used to analyze the correlation of the independent and the dependent variables. This analysis showed the strength and
direction of the relation. The major findings of the study showed that stress was significantly and positively
related to teacher evaluation system, salary and benefits, workload, colleagues, student misbehavior and time management. The results showed that stress level tends to increase with poor teacher evaluation system, lower salary and benefits as perceived by the teachers, increased workload, lesser collegial support, increased student misbehavior and poor time management. However, stress among secondary school teachers was not related to demographic factors along age, gender and lengths of service. From the data generated, it was found that there were no
significant differences in stress level among teachers of various age groups and lengths of service. Stress level did not differ between male and female teachers. Four variables, namely time management, student misbehavior, workload and colleagues, jointly explained 34.64% of the variance in stress level. However, the variance in stress level was not significantly explained by teacher evaluation system and salary and benefits. This implied that 65.36% of the variance in stress level has yet to be explained. This indicated that there are other factors that need to be
considered in future studies of stress among secondary school teachers. The best predictor for stress level was found to be time management. Teachers who face time management problem found themselves having too little time to relax and insufficient time to complete their work. The three most common symptoms of stress experienced by secondary school teachers were exhaustion, tension and
headache.