Examining the Effect of Teachers’ Perception of Psychological Empowerment on the Stress Level They Perceive

Abstract

The aim of this study is to find out if there is a correlation and what kind of a correlation there is between how primary, secondary, and high school teachers perceive psychological empowerment provided for them and their perception of stress. The data for this study are based on the opinions of 680 teachers who wereselected by random sampling among the teachers lecturing in the city of Malatya, Turkey,during the 2017-2018 school year. The “Psychological Empowerment Scale” which was developed by Spreitzer (1995) and adapted into Turkish by Gümüşlüoğlu & Karakitapoğlu (2009), and the “Perceived Stress Scale” which was developed by Cohen, Kamarck & Mermelstein (1983), and adapted into Turkish by Eskin & Harlak, Demirkıran & Dereboy (2013) have been employed as data collection tools.

After analyzing the data obtained during the study, it has been revealed that the average of all the dimensions on the perceived stress scale corresponds to the ‘moderate’ level, or ‘sometimes’, while the average of all the dimensions on the psychological empowerment scale corresponds to the high level, or ‘very often’. It has been found that there is a significant correlation between the ‘gender’ variable and the ‘self-determination’ dimension. Another significant correlation has been observed between ‘seniority’ variable and ‘competence’ dimension and psychological empowerment ‘in general’. In additionto evaluating the values of the dimension of ‘self-determination’ on the empowerment scale based on the ‘gender’ variable, it has been found that the average of male teachers’ perception is higher than of female teachers’. Finally, it has been concluded that the teachers’ perception of ‘impact’ significantly predicts their perception of ‘insufficient competence’.