Mohd Dahlan A.

Malek, Adi Fahrudin and Ida

Shafinaz Mohd Kamil

Occupational Stress and

Psychological Well-Being in
Emergency Services
October 2009 from the Researchgate website

Nuraisyah Binti Ali Daimi (BP19110213)

Nurul Hanees Assykiela Mohd Suyuti (BP19110078)
Nur Shafiqah Binti Ahmad (BP19110233)

Firefighters play their role on
protecting the public against the
threats by oftenly responding to
emergency calls.
Experienced post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) from
witnessing traumatic event
likes they can be exposed to
physical, chemical and
biological hazards.

Examines the roles of works This article focuses on sources of

motivation and coping behavior as
moderators between exposure to
occupational stressors and the
impact on psychological well-being
and job satisfaction.
stress as predictors of
psychological well-being (anxiety,
stress & depression) and job
satisfaction among Malaysian
firefighters.

Were examined in a questionnaire

survey of 617 Malaysian
firefighters.
 Beaton and Murphy (1993) in which they
suggested that firefighters job stress is
quite complicated and multifaceted until
they developed the sources of
occupational stress scale (SOOS) that
assessed into 14 different categories of
occupational stress like sleep disturbance,
job skill concerns, past critical incidents
and management conflicts.

Young and Cooper (1997) also found that

among 427 emergency service workers
especially in the fire service and
ambulance services in England confront a
major stress effect because of the poor
physical health.
Work motivation can be divide into three Beaton, Murphy, Johnson, Pike and
aspects such as accomplishment striving Corneil (1999) cited that firefighters
(AS), status striving (SS) and the must cope with extraordinary and
communion striving (CS). persistent occupational demands that are
potential cumulative.

Pinder (1998) described that the work

motivation as a set of internal and
external forces that initiate work-
related behavior and determine it’s form,
direction, intensity and the duration.
This study was to examine the sources of stress as a
predictor of psychological well-being (anxiety, stress
and depression) and job satisfaction among Malaysian
firefighters.

Second aim was to inspect the roles of work motivation

and coping behavior as moderator variables.
 Research Design:
Quantitative Approach

Quantitative Design:
Descriptive Research

Sample:
617 from Malaysian firefighters
in operational units

Questionnaire:
Self-report Questionnaire
consists of 5 components
 Sources of stress
Sources of Occupational Stress
in Fire Fighters and Paramedics
(SOOS) (Beaton & Murphy,
1993)
• 57 items
• 1-100 rating scales reduced to
1-10 rating scales
Work motivation
The Motivational Orientation
Inventory (MOI) (Barrick et al.,
2002)
Coping strategies
Coping Responses of Rescue
Workers Inventory (CRRWI)
(Corneil, 1993)
• 32 items

Psychological well-being
Psychological Well-being Scale
(PWS):
• 12 items → Clinical Anxiety Job satisfaction
Scale (Thyer, 1992)
The Job Satisfaction Scale
• 12 items → Index of Clinical
(JSS) (War, Cook & Wall, 1979)
Stress (Hudson & Abell, 1992)
• 12 items → Generalized
Contentment Scale (Hudson,
1993)
Results of the Studies
Descriptive statistics for all
variables where it shows that
the internal reliabilities of
measures are acceptable

For the correlations, the results show higher level

of pressure rose from sources of stress, lower job
satisfaction and poorer psychological well-being
among Malaysian firefighter which also conclude
that these findings supported hypothesis 1
There is a significant influence of overall
coping behavior as a moderating variable
between sources of stress on overall
psychological well-being (stress, anxiety
and depression).

The interaction between the overall

sources of stress and work motivation is
not a significant influence on the
relationship between the overall sources
of stress and psychological well-being

None of the subscales of work motivation

(accomplishment striving, status striving
and communion striving) made a
significant contribution as moderators
 Job Satisfaction
v The change in R2 from step 1 and 2
reaches significant levels, but step 3
does not.

v The hypothesis that there is

signi f i c a nt i nf l ue nc e of c opi ng
behavior as a moderating variable on
job satisfaction is not supported by
the findings

v Work motivation was not a

significant contributor (moderating
variable) to psychological well-
being (anxiety, stress and
depression) in Malaysian
firefighters.
 Discussions
v The overall SOOS was found to have a significant negative correlation
with job satisfaction.
v ‘‘Job skill concerns’’ component was the highest ranked for the sources of
stress, and the lowest component was ‘‘discrimination’’.
v The level of depression among Malaysian firefighters was highest,
followed by the level of anxiety and the level of stress.
v Firefighters have a good level of psychological well-being compared to
normative data.
v The overall coping behavior has a remarkable influence on overall job
satisfaction.
v Malaysian and US samples share the same result for cognitive behavioral
avoidance and numbing which is the lowest score for this component.
v Malaysian firefighters generally used more coping strategies compared to
US firefighters.
v This study suggested that the ways firefighters cope with stressful work
situations are more important than how motivated they are.
 Limitations and Implications
Ø The data were self-reported
responses and were based on a
firefighter sample only.
Ø This study is not a long-term
Limitations study.
Ø There is a disadvantage in using
a questionnaire design where it
is very specific and focused so
it is hard to obtain all the data
needed.
Ø This study could develop an implication
on practice and national policy for
firefighters’ stress management
programs.
Ø Models of job satisfaction and Implications
psychological well-being could provide
some guidelines as to which methods
are the most frequently used by
Malaysian firefighters to manage
stress at work and then implement
them for other emergency service
worker.
Firefighters' job satisfaction must be high for them to
stay in this occupation as it plays an important role for
firefighters in increasing their job performance.

When a firefighter has the best strategies to cope

with stress, this will perhaps improve job satisfaction
and psychological well-being.