Search

Introduction: Occupational stress occurs when job requirement do not match the capabilities, resources and needs of the workers, and occupational strain is one of the important source of occupational stress that poses a threat to the health of workers and also to the health of organizations. Lecturer is one of the position that mostly reported having high strain and nowadays, the stressfulness of teaching has been recognized as a big number of academic workers are reporting stress, depression and anxiety caused by their work. Hair cortisol was used to measure the occupational strain because it may represent a long term exposure to the stress related hormone Objectives: To determine the prevalence of occupational strain, the organizational factors that contributed to occupational strain as well as the association between hair cortisol level and occupational strain among lecturers in Community Colleges. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted and 189 workers participated in this study. The validated self-administered Malay version of Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) was used to verify the socio-demographic background, factors contributed to work strain which is organizational factors and the stress level of the respondents. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients revealed for organizational factors were 0.75 for decision latitude,0.84 for social support and 0,80 for psychological job demand and job insecurity. The hair cortisol level was analysed using ALPCO Cortisol ELISA Kit. Result: The response rate was 87.1%. The prevalence of occupational strain among the respondents was 25.9% and this was based on the respondent’s psychological job demand and decision latitude. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that job insecurity (95% CI: 1.08-2.09) and social support (95% CI: 0.69-0.91) also have significant associations with occupational strain. However, there were no significant association between occupational strain and hair cortisol level (P=0.063). The sensitivity

Background: A cross sectional study conducted to identify the organizational factors associated to the occupational stress among lecturers in selected Community Colleges, Peninsular Malaysia. Methods: Study was conducted by using cluster-sampling method and 189 self-administrated questionnaires were distributed. A validated Malay version of Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) was used to obtain the information regarding respondent’s background and their respective job scope. JCQ described four organizational factors that were decision latitude, psychological job demand, social support and job insecurity. Results: Response rate was 87.1% with 25.9% of the lecturers were stressed. There were no significant association between occupational stress with any socio-demography factors but the result showed significant associations between occupational stress and all four organizational factors studied, decision latitude (P<0.001); psychological job demand (P<0.001); social support (P<0.001); and job insecurity (P<0.001). Conclusion: From the result, it clearly showed that stress among lecturers came from organizational factors in their workplace. The highest organizational factors reported were insufficient social support from the employer and limited authority in decision making. These factors might cause lack of communication and poor social interaction. The occupational stress among lecturers was associated with all the organizational factors (decision latitude, psychological job demand, social support and job insecurity) in this study. Therefore, preventive measures or intervention programs need to be implemented in Community Colleges to alleviate the negative consequences.

This study is a cross-sectional study with the objective to determine mismatch between school furniture and anthropometric measurement among primary school children in Mersing. The sample consisted of 91 primary school children (46 male and 45 female) from Year 2 and Year 5 in two schools in Mersing District, Malaysia. Seven anthropometric measurement (height, weight, popliteal height, buttock-popliteal length, hip breadth, shoulder height and elbow height while sitting) as well as 5 furniture dimensions (seat height, seat depth, seat width, backrest height and seat to desk height) were taken. Instruments used were Martyn type anthropometer set, ruler, height scale and weighing scale. Differences between genders in anthropometric measurements were also investigated in this study. Findings showed 100% high mismatch for seat height, seat depth, desk height respectively while 56% match and only 44% mismatch for backrest height among Year 2 children. Year 5 students reported contrary result with 79% mismatch for seat height, 91% for backrest height and 100% for both seat depth and desk height. There was no significant difference between genders for both age groups. In conclusion, there was a mismatch between furniture and children's anthropometric measurements. It is recommended that school furniture be redesigned so as to conform to the children's physiological measurement. The use of adjustable furniture can be taken into consideration in designing new furniture for school environments in order to meet all the differences in children anthropometry.

Occupational stress is a major hazard for many workers. Increasing workloads, downsizing, overtime and shift work are just a few the many causes of stressful working condition. Moreover unhealthy work organization will not only affect the work performance but will affect the worker's health as well. With this in mind, a study was conducted to determine the prevalence of occupational stress and to identify the association between the organizational factors with stress level among factory workers. Through a cross sectional study, 91 manufacturing workers were randomly sampled and data was collected using a questionnaire, namely the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ). The validated self-administered Malay version of JCQ was used to verify the socio-demographic background, the stress level of the respondents and the factors contributed to work stress which is organizational factors. JCQ contains four factors which were the psychological demand (job demand), decision latitude (job control), social support and job insecurity. Overall the prevalence of occupational stress among the respondent was 25.3%. The result showed that there were significant associations between occupational stress and decision latitude (p<;0.001); psychological job demand (p<;0.001); and job insecurity (p=0.027). However, there was no significant association between occupational stress level and social support (p=0.433). This study showed that three out of four organizational factors had significant associations to occupational stress indicating unhealthy work organization. In addition as the prevalence is considered low, work stressors can be detected at an early stage. Therefore, preventive measure or intervention needs to implement accordingly to alleviate the negative consequences since the occupational stress can be considered as a major hazard for the workers.