Teachers' Stressors and Strains: A Longitudinal Study of Their Relationships

The authors tested the hypothesized unidirectional or bidirectional effects of 5 types of teachers' work-related stressors on each of the 4 types of psychological strain: somatic complaints, burnout, and intrinsic and extrinsic job dissatisfaction. The authors used structural regression analyses to analyze the responses of a representative sample of 404 high school teachers who had completed both our T1 (beginning of school year) and T2 (end of school year) questionnaires. The authors found support for the expected unidirectional effects of the T1 work-related stressors on the respondents' T2 somatic complaints (with baseline somatic complaints controlled for), and also for the expected unidirectional effects of T1 intrinsic and extrinsic job dissatisfaction on the T2 values of the five types of stressors (with baseline stressors controlled for). Only partial support was found for the expected bidirectional relationships between the stressors and teachers' burnout. The authors suggest that the directionality across time of the relationships between stressors and strains may depend on the intrinsic properties of the strain under consideration.