Occupational Stress Levels among Rural Teachers in the Areas of Mental Retardation, Learning Disabilities, and Emotional Conflict

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to compare occupational stress levels of rural educators in the areas of mental retardation, learning disabilities, and emotional conflict. Occupational stress levels were measured by the Teacher Stress Inventory (Fimian, 1985), which was developed and validated for teachers of exceptional children. The sample consisted of 154 randomly selected and specifically selected rural special educators in the 21 rural counties with set defined parameters of a population of 50,000 or less. The Teacher Stress Inventory was designed to assess stress levels of special educators. Subscales of the Teacher Stress Inventory were personal/professional stressors, professional distress, discipline/motivation, emotional manifestations, biobehavloral manifestations, physiological/fatigue manifestations, and time management. The data were analyzed using the one-way analysis of variance and the multivariate analysis of variance procedures. No significant differences were evident between mean stress scores and mean subscale scores of the three Identified groups.