EMPLOYEE/JOB CHARACTERISTICS AND MANIFESTATIONS OF JOB STRAIN IN NURSING ASSISTANTS WORKING IN LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES.
Contributors: New York University.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 190
Subjects: Psychology, Clinical.; Gerontology.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Nursing assistants (NAs) provide 90% of the personal care for the residents of America's 20,000 nursing homes. The physical and emotional demands of their work, low status and wages, and lack of recognition put NAs at high risk for job strain. In an attempt to explain NAs' job strain, the relationship between a set of employee/job characteristics and a set of job strain manifestations was explored.

Nursing assistants (N = 150) responded to questionnaires assessing their attitude toward old people, and their experience of decision latitude and social support on the job. Job strain was measured multidimensionally by assessing emotional exhaustion, health concerns, and absenteeism, variables suggested by a Person-Environment fit model of occupational stress.

Canonical correlation analysis revealed the presence of two statistically significant dimensions underlying the relationship between the two sets of variables. The first dimension seemed to suggest that work-related interpersonal stress may be associated with internalized manifestations of job strain, such as psychological or physical symptoms. The second dimension appeared to suggest that stress associated with characteristics of the job may be correlated with externalized manifestations of job strain, such as absenteeism.

Social support was positively associated with emotional exhaustion and health concerns. It was speculated that the helpfulness of social support may be outweighed by the conflict experienced in interpersonal relationships on the job. Alternatively, it was suggested that when NA's experience job strain they may seek out social support as a way of coping.

Decision latitude and social support were positively associated with absenteeism. While NAs agreed that their job requires knowledge and skill, they disagreed that they have opportunities to participate in decision making. If NAs experience discomfort related to these conflicting beliefs, perhaps absenteeism provides respite from this cognitive dissonance. Social support may enable NAs to blame the job, rather than themselves, for stress experienced in the workplace. Thus, NAs may target the workplace for expressing job strain as absenteeism.

Findings suggested that future research investigate both the support and conflict inherent in NA's interpersonal relationships. Exploration of NA's experience of work-related cognitive dissonance may also be revealing.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: B, page: 0539.

Thesis (PH.D.)--NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 1994.

School code: 0146.