The effect of laughter therapy to reduce work stress levels among administrative staff at Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta

Abstract

Background: Work stress is a serious problem that must be dealt with because workers who experience work stress will experience emotional feelings, discomfort at work, and frustration, which can affect their work at work. Therefore, laughter therapy is the right and cheapest way to relax tense muscles to reduce work stress. This research aimed to understand the effect of laughter therapy on reducing stress caused by work on administrative staff.Methods: This research used the Quasi-Experiment method. The sample in this study was 20 staff of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta divided into control and intervention groups containing ten people, respectively. The sampling technique was random sampling. The intervention group got laughter therapy three times a week in 1 week. Meanwhile, the control group was directed without treatment. These stress levels were measured at pre and post-test using a modified work stress questionnaire from NIOSH. The statistical test that was used was the Wilcoxon test and the Man Whitney test.Results: The average distribution of the work-stress level at the pre-test stage was 22.7 and at the post-test stage was 21, with the p-value 0.883 (p> 0.05). In the intervention group, the average distribution of the total stress level at the pre-test stage was 20.8 and at the post-test stage was 18.5, p-value 0.203 (p> 0.05). This means that there was no significant difference between the pre-test and post-test stress levels in the control and intervention groups. The Mann-Whitney test results show a decrease in the p-value in the comparison of the average pre-test (p=0.705) and post-test (p=0.448) in both groups.Conclusion: Laughter therapy can reduce work stress in the intervention group, but the decrease does not show statistical significance. Work stress levels have decreased more in the group that has received laughter therapy than those who have not received laughter therapy.