Work-related stress, quality of life, and coping mechanism among lecturers in a Tertiary Educational Institution in Anambra State, Nigeria

BMC Psychology Chukwuemeka et al. BMC Psychology (2023) 11:73 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-023-01114-5 Open Access RESEARCH Work-related stress, quality of life, and coping mechanism among lecturers in a Tertiary Educational Institution in Anambra State, Nigeria Uchechukwu Martha Chukwuemeka1, Uchenna Prosper Okonkwo1*, Chibuike Jefferen Njoku1, Sylvester Emeka Igwe2, Taiwo Joseph Oyewumi3 and Daniel Chimmuanya Ugwuanyi4 Abstract Introduction Work-related stress (WRS) is a highly prevalent and pervasive problem that can result in loss of productivity and deterioration of a lecturer’s health. Lecturing work requires coping with some of the stressful situations found in any workplace to have a favourable quality of work life. The study determined the influence of sex, years of teaching experience, and academic rank on work-related stress, coping mechanisms, and quality of work life among lecturers at Nnamdi Azikiwe University (NAU). Method This was a cross-sectional survey involving 283 lecturers consecutively recruited from NAU after proportionate randomization of the lecturers in 101 departments. The Health and Safety Executive Work Related stress (HSE-WRS), Work-Related Quality of life (WRQL), and Brief-cope Questionnaires (BCQ) were applied to assess the participant’s work-related stress, quality of work life, and coping mechanism (CM) respectively. Data were analyzed using Kruskal Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests at a 0.05 level of significance. Result Sex, years of teaching experience, and academic rank had statistically significant influence on 14 subsets of coping mechanism with p-values </=0.01. Years of teaching experience had a statistically significant influence on work-related stress (p = 0.00). Sex, years of teaching experience, and academic rank did not influence work-related quality of life in a statistically significant way. Conclusion There was a statistically significant influence of sex, years of teaching experience, and academic rank on coping strategies of lecturers. Also, a statistically significant influence of years of teaching experience on work related stress of lecturers was ascertained and revealed that male lecturers coped better with the rigorous demands of the job compared to female lecturers. Keywords Coping mechanism, Lecturers, Quality of life, Nigeria, Tertiary Institution, Work-related stress *Correspondence: Uchenna Prosper Okonkwo 1 Department of Medical Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health Sciences and Technology, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria 2 Department of Medical Rehabilitation, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria 3 Department of Physiotherapy, University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Edo StateBenin City, Nigeria 4 Department of Radiography and Radiological Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences and Technology, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Chukwuemeka et al. BMC Psychology (2023) 11:73 Introduction Stress was conceived as pressure from the environment, then as strain within the person [1]. Stress is generally a situation where the demands exceed the capacity of an individual to respond and can potentially have negative physical and psychological consequences [2, 3]. Thus, stress is more likely in some situations than others and in some individuals than others. Stress can undermine the achievement of goals, both for individuals and for organizations [1]. Stress was also defined as an adaptive response, mediated by individual differences and/ or psychological processes that are a consequence of any external (environmental) action, situation, or event that places excessive psychological and/or physical demands on a person [4]. A stressor is an environmental event that significantly perturbs the entire human dynamical system away from the optimal attractor resulting in a state of lower utility [5]. Stressors are not necessarily physical changes in the environment but may involve the loss of a significant relationship, financial stress, negative neighborhood characteristics, or social threats including discrimination [6–9]. Work-related stress has been defined as harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker [10]. Work-related stress has become a major occupational risk factor in all industrialized countries, although comparatively less is known within many newly industrialized and developing countries [11]. The experience of workplace stress has been subject to a large amount of research and interest in the topic shows no sign of waning. It is now generally accepted that prolonged intense stress can hurt an individual’s mental and physical health [12, 13], and coping mechanism to relief stress are often times adopted. Coping mechanisms were defined as constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person [14]. Coping is dependent on personality and perceptions about life experiences and the strategies adopted can differ by individuals. However, overall, the main aim is to reduce stress, reach a balanced state of functioning [15] and quality of life. Quality of work life (QOWL) is the degree to which members of a work organization can satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in the organization [16]. Quality of work life is a systemic approach that affects all aspects of the organization and forms a series of beliefs and values [17, 18]. The most distinct element of QOWL is its relationship to the impact not only on the employers but also on organizational efficiency and organizational decision-making processes. In general, quality of work life is an employee’s visible physical and mental vitality and the level of job Page 2 of 9 satisfaction and motivation. Quality of work life is the provision (...truncated)