Shih-Jui Tung
Graduate Institute of Agricultural Extension Education National Chung-Hsing University
The causal relationship among stress, coping behaviors, and burnout has currently been described as a sequential process in job stress studies and referred to as “stress process” in literature. Though this model is empirically verified in a great many studies, very limited efforts have been endeavored to reconfirm it by taking various factors (control variables) into account. This study tends to explore the existence of stress process within agricultural extension agents on one hand, and brings in some environmental factors and personal factors, such as education level, age, tenure years as control variables to test the replication of stress process on the other hand.
The findings reveals that the stress process composed of causal relationship among job stress, coping behaviors, and burnout indeed exists in this population. A variety of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses further substantiate this model by controlling respondent’s organization type, education level, age, and tenure year respectively.
Keywords: job stress, coping behaviors, burnout, stress process