Factors Associated with Psychological Well-Being and Stress: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Psychological Well-Being and Gender Differences in a Population of Teachers

Ioannis Katsantonis

doi:10.29333/pr/8235

Abstract

The goal of the present study is to examine mainly the associations of contextual variables with stress and teachers’ psychological well-being across organizational cultures. The responses (N= 51,782) of a population of primary school teachers from 15 different educational cultures were analyzed. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was implemented to confirm the associations of protective factors with stress and workplace well-being at the individual unit of analysis. Following the individual-level analysis, multiple-group SEM (MGSEM) was conducted to examine whether these relations are equivalent across gender groups across cultures. Next, a series of multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) were carried out to compare the factor intercepts of the dimensions of work-related stress and workplace well-being within clusters of similar organizational cultures. Results indicated that only a limited number of structural associations vary as a function of gender across all cultures at the individual unit of analysis. Mixed results were found in favor of within-cluster homogeneity of latent means. That is, some cultural clusters such as the East-Asian were displaying within-cluster heterogeneity with large latent differences in workload stress. These findings have implications for the development of mental and emotional disorders such as depression or burnout as well as for the prevention of these conditions within educational settings.

Highlights

The teaching profession has been included among the most stressful professional careers (De Simone, Cicotto, & Lampis, 2016; Kamtsios, 2018; Katsantonis, in-press; Mearns & Cain, 2003)
A careful inspection of the present findings seems to suggest that personal resources such as self-efficacy and job satisfaction appear to be more powerful protective factors against inflated levels of stress and psychological distress
The current study showed across various educational cultures that, despite the suggestions of gender-related individual differences in psychological well-being, teachers’ gender did not play a major role in the associations between protective factors and psychological well-being and stress

Summary

Introduction

The teaching profession has been included among the most stressful professional careers (De Simone, Cicotto, & Lampis, 2016; Kamtsios, 2018; Katsantonis, in-press; Mearns & Cain, 2003). Job-related stress, as applied to the educational context, has a multitude of causes that are differently influenced by specific cultures (Klassen et al, 2013). From the research perspective of the protective factors, the international literature suggests that variables such as self-efficacy (cf., Katsantonis, in-press; Klassen et al, 2013; Schwarzer & Hallum, 2008), contextual factors such as the organizational climate (Collie et al, 2012; Katsantonis, 2020), job satisfaction (Ainley & Carstens, 2018; Katsantonis, 2020), and team innovativeness (Ainley & Carstens, 2018) play an important role in fostering psychological well-being and reducing work-related stress

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