Stress Di Kalangan Pentadbir, Sekolah Menengah Di Bandar Georgetown, Pulau Pinang

The purpose of this study was to investigate job stress among school administrators. The study identified levels of stress, sources of stress, relationship between stress
levels and sources of stress with respect to demographic variables (gender, marital status, age, length of service and position). The population of the study consists of 67
administrators, that is all principals and senior assistants of 34 fully aided government secondary schools in Georgetown. 20 items measuring stress were adapted from the Administrative Stress Index (ASI) instrument while 8 manifestation of stress items were adapted from the distress symptoms instrument. 67 questionnaire were
distributed to the respondens of which 63 were useable. The first pilot test was carried out on 22 school adminstrators in Ipoh. Stress items recorded .928 in Cronbach’s Alpha reliability test and .8511 on stress symptom items. A second pilot study was carried out on 27 administrators from secondary schools in Pulau District. The test recorded .8356 and .8336 on the Croncbach Alpha reliability test for stress items and symptoms of stress items respectively. The actual study recorded a realibility
coefficient of .8288 and .8368 for both groups of stress items. This study was a descriptive study. Descriptive statistics such as percentage, frequency, mean and
standard deviation were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated that all the respondents experienced stress with 60.3% indicating high stress level. The total mean score for the stress items was 3.619, with a standard deviation of 580. The main sources of stress were administrative responsibilities (mean = 3.857) followed by work overload (mean = 3.778) and insufficient resource allocation (mean = 3.492).
Interpersonal relationship factors had the least effect on stress level (mean = 2.905). The findings showed that items concerning preparation and implementation of
activities or programmes organized by PPDLIPN at school, district, zone or national level (mean = 4.079) was the main sources of stress. The item that has least effect on
stress level was the item measuring lack of support or cooperation (mean = 2.540). The finding also indicated that female adminitrators, principals, administrators with
less than 5 years of administrative experiences and administrators above 50 years of age seem to experienced higher levels of stress. However there were no differences in stress levels between single and married administrators. Psychological symptoms (mean = 2.79) was the main symptom indicating manifestation of stress followed by behavioural symptoms (mean = 2.229) and physiological symptom (mean = 2.08) respectively.