Faculty Perception of Stress and Coping Strategies in a Saudi Private University: An Exploratory Study

Teaching profession was once viewed as a ‘low stress occupation’ and they have been envied for tenure, light workloads, flexibility and other perks such as foreign trips for study and conference. However, some recent studies suggest that university faculty is among the most stressed occupational group. The present study was conducted to explore the faculty perception towards occupational stress using established questionnaire, data collected from five departments in the private university. Research findings on the coping strategies that faculty used to tackle stress were also reviewed. Through this study, it is suggested that the top management and University Administration should focus their attention on faculty stress, especially on two areas (student Interactions and Professional Identity) to reduce the stress among the faculty members. Care should be taken to make even remote faculty feel a part of the greater whole of this institution thorough regular communication and support.


Introduction
Stress is a term commonly used to describe feelings of tensions or exhaustion usually associated with work overload or overly demanding work.Stress is natural phenomenon in an individual's daily life.In the workplace, it can serve to enhance an individual's motivation, performance, satisfaction and personal achievement (Mathewman, Rose and Hetherington, 2009).In other words, stress is considered to be any pressure which exceeds the individual's capacity to maintain physiological, psychological and/or emotional stability (Furnham, 2005).Hans Selye (1979) defines stress as any external events or internal drive which threatens to upset the organismic equilibrium.That is, stress is anything that changes our physical, emotional, behavioral or mental state while we counter various stimuli in our environment.Hans Selye points out the important aspects of the stress process and the stressors -that is, the antecedent stimuli that cause the stress (Sekaran, 2004).
The phenomenon of stress is highly individualist in nature.Recent researchers demonstrate that individual responses to stress differ according to the stressor and varying environmental and personal factors (Cox, Griffiths and Rial-Gonzalez, 2000).Some people have high levels of tolerance for stress and thrive very well in the face of several stressors in the environment.On the other hand some individuals are not able to perform well except when subject to a level of stress that activates and energizes them to put forth their best efforts (Sekaran, 2004).This shows that individual differences may cause some to interpret these stressors as positive stress or Eustress (which stimulate them), while other experience negative stress or distress (which detracts from their efforts).These effects may be short term and diminish quickly or they may last long time (Newstrom, 2007).

Occupational Stress
Occupational Stress can be described as the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand on them (Health and Safety Executive, 2005).Similarly, the nature of job itself can determine the type and degree of stress that can be induced.Many jobs can be considered stressful, yet does not necessarily mean that they will impact on an individual's psychological well-being.Police officers, firefighters, disaster workers, medical, ambulance, and voluntary emergency personnel all contend with considerable stress as a result of the nature of their jobs, yet they do not necessarily fall ill (Mathewman, et al., 2009).If the job is monotonous, dull and boring or too demanding in terms of travels or transfer, the individual is likely to experience stress (Telsang, 2007).
Occupational stress and its effect have been among the most popular topics in research literature.This is because many researchers believe that stress is becoming a major contributor to absenteeism, low employee morale, high accident and turnover rates.The cost of these stress consequences has become huge burden on many organizations (Ben-Bakr, Jefri and Al-shammri, 1995).A review of the literature identified that occupational stress costs US economy over $300 billion a year (Werner and DeSimone, 2009).The effects of occupational stress are devastating to both employees and employers (McDonald and Korabik, 1991).High levels of chronic stress can results in job dissatisfaction and aggression, as well as lead to the thickening and hardening if the heart muscles, resulting in cardiovascular disease (Rozanski, Blumenthal and Kaplan, 1999).
Literature on occupational stress in Saudi Arabia is very limited due to lack of scholarly research on occupational stress and poor access to database.Al-Hendawi (1994;in Al-Knaan (2002)) explored the levels of the occupation stress among the staff in health care sector in Saudi Arabia.This study examined the occupational stress among the employees from different nationalities in Saudi Arabia.She reported that employees from non-Arabic countries experience higher level of stress than Saudi employees.She indicated that these significant variations in the level of stress are due to the fact that Saudi employees are more inclined to occupy supervisory or managerial position and they enjoy higher levels of job security than contracted employees whose contract will be renewed yearly basis.She also reported that nurses experience higher levels of occupation stress than physicians and administrators.She related these variations with lower social status of nurses than physicians and administrators.Ben-Bakr, Jefri and Al-Shammari (1995) surveyed 442 employees working for 23 different public, semi-public and private organizations.There were 61.3% Saudis, 16.9% were Asians, 13.3 % were Arabs, and 8.5% were Westerners.The researchers found that Saudi and non-Saudi employees in private and semi-private organizations experience a lack of feedback about their performance which was major contributor to their job stress.The researchers also identified that people in the type of Saudi organizations experience role conflict.

Comparison between teachers' stress and other professionals' stress
Many researchers conducted their researches and presented a fair amount of comparison between stressful nature of teaching and other occupational researches.For Instance, Kyriacou (1980in Ol-ling (1995)) reported that teachers, when compared to people in other professions, had the highest levels of occupational stress.

Occupational Stress and the University Professors
Teaching profession was once viewed as a 'low stress occupation' (Fisher, 1992) and they have been envied for tenure, light workloads, flexibility and other perks such as foreign trips for study and conference (Winefield, 2003).However, recent studies have demonstrated that university professors experience levels of stress that are unparalleled in any other employed group of individuals.University professors tend to experience higher than normal levels of stress and these high levels of stress have increased over the last 6 years.The overall stress level of professors is now second only to the recently unemployed when compared to other professions (Korotkov, Fraser, Houlihan, Fenwick, McDonald and Fish, 2008).One possible explanation for this is that academic salaries have fallen in real terms in countries such as the USA, the UK, and Australia.Increasing numbers of academic positions are now untenured, workloads have increased and academics are under increasing pressure to 'publish or perish ' (Winefield, 2003).Endres and Wearden (1996) studied full-time journalism and mass communication faculty.Ninety-seven percent reported that they experience work related stress and due to this they had a negative impact on their perceptions of themselves and their work.
Research on stress among academic and general staff of universities from across the globe indicates that the phenomenon of occupational stress in universities is alarmingly widespread and increasing (Winefield, 2003).Research conducted in the UK, USA, New Zealand, and Australia has identified several key factors commonly associated with stress among academic and general staff.These include, work overload, time constraint, lack of promotion opportunities, inadequate recognition, inadequate salary, changing job role, inadequate management or participation in management, inadequate resources and funding and student interaction (Gillispie, Walsh, Winefield, Dua and Stough, 2001).
Other sources of stress, such as work-related technology (Totten and Schuldt, 2009), Family life and work balance (Korotkov et al., 2008), years of experience (Totten and Schuldt, 2008), Job-type category (Dua, 1994), control over the work environment (Golnaz, 1997) and person-environment fit (Korotkov et al., 2008), have been highlighted in few studies.University faculty plays a vital role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and innovation, in addition to education and training.Above cited research demonstrated that high levels of occupational stress, if left unchecked and unmanaged, it will undermine the quality, productivity and creativity of employees ' work, and employees' well being (Gillispie et al., 2001).Therefore, this study extends the current literature of stress among university staff in Saudi Arabian context.Very little research has undertaken on the concept of stress and its determinants in relation to diverse foreign work force, and varied employee demographics in the developing world in general and Saudi Arabia in particular.
In summary, empirical studies were presented in above section.Limited literature has covered a wide range of Saudi Arabian organizations and presented the pertaining sources and reasons of occupational stressors.These studies indicated that role conflict, work load, lack of feedback would be the major sources of job stress in Saudi organizations.Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors which contribute to academic and occupational stress and to estimate their direct and indirect effects on various relevant outcomes, such as faculty turnover.

Purpose of the Study
This study extends the current literature on occupational stress among university faculty.The following are the main objectives of this study: • It investigates the occupational stress experienced by university faculty.
• The study analyzes stress in relation to individual differences at the university.
• The study determines the sources of the stress and seeks faculty's opinions on the managing occupational stress.

Sample and Procedure
The surveys were carried out among faculty members in one of the private universities of Saudi Arabia.The 109 questionnaires were distributed to the five departments namely: Marketing & Management, Finance & Accounting, Computer Sciences, Information System, English departments.Each questionnaire was accompanied by a covering letter.This snowball non-probability sampling is thought to be more effective, practical and culturally acceptable in Saudi Arabia than other methods such as telephone or mail surveys (Ben-Bakr, Al-Shammari, Jefri and Prasad, 1994).In order to maintain complete anonymity, participants were requested to return the completed questionnaires directly to the researchers.In all 68 usable questionnaires were returned: a response rate of 62%.A review of published social research literature suggests that a response rate of 50% is considered adequate for analysis and reporting (Babbie, 2007).

Questionnaires
Two instruments were used for data collection in this study: A demographic questionnaire and the Faculty stress Index (FSI).

Faculty Stress Index (FSI)
The Faculty Stress Index (FSI) was developed by Walter Gmelch and the instrument used to measure faculty stress in this study.The FSI consists of 45 items designed to identify, group, measure and assist in the development of strategies to help faculty cope with stress (Gmelch, 1993).According to Gmelch, Lovrich and Wilkie (1984) the Faculty Stress Index (FSI) were compiled from four sources.First, the study was ascertain which work situations faculty perceived as the most stressful through maintaining faculty log book.Second, the data were classified into variables.The third step included investigating the significant relationships between perceived stress and demographic factors.The final stage identified the strategies for coping with faculty stress.The FSI items are divided into five subscales: (a) Time constraint (b) Reward and Recognition (c) Professional Identity (d) Departmental Influences, and (e) Student interaction.The higher the score, greater would be the stress.The FSI questionnaire ascertains occupational stress on five-point Likert scale.

Demographic Questionnaire
Other instrument that was used in this study was a questionnaire designed by the researchers to gather demographic information about the participants.The instrument consists of 8 questions that relate to the professional characteristics of the faculty and information about academic program.The demographic questionnaire includes Age, Gender, Marital Status, Academic Rank, Nationality, Academic Degree, Teaching department, Service type and Tenure.

Results and Analysis
The main objective of this exploratory study was to examine the relationship between the demographic factors and faculty stress among the faculty at one of the private universities in Saudi Arabia.The study employed a cross-sectional survey method research design.The sample was comprised of faculty members from five departments from the private institute of Saudi Arabia.The data were collected using two instruments: the Faculty Stress Index (FSI), a survey designed to measure the dependent variable faculty stress (Gmelch, 1993); and a demographic questionnaire which supplied information on the characteristics of the sample.This section presents the findings of the statistical analysis of the data collected using the instruments discussed above.This section is divided into two sections.The first section discusses the findings of the demographic questionnaire and the second section describes the results of the Faculty Stress Index (FSI) instrument about the perceptions of the stress as experienced by the faculty.

Demographics
The sample of this study was collected from five departments of the colleges/departments in the private university in Saudi Arabia.Table 1 shows the age, gender, marital status, job status, academic degree, academic ranks and years of experiences reported by the participants.The respondents in this study ranged from 26 years old to over 60 years old.The age range for the majority (42%) of the faculty was between 36-45 years and other highest group (30%) of the faculty was between 46-55 years.The data for this study was collected from the male campus; therefore, 100% respondents were male.The majority of the respondents reported their marital status as married (84%) and 12% reported single, while 3% reported as others.
The respondents represented almost all the faculty ranks.Almost 6% of the respondents were professors, 6% were associate professors, 39% were assistant professors, 6% were senior lecturers, 33% of the respondents were lecturers and 6% were instructors.Most of the respondents reported their nationalities as non-Saudi (94%) and 3% were Saudi participants in the sample.[Insert Table 1 here] Table 2 depicts the educational levels achieved by the participants, their affiliations with the colleges or departments, nature of their services and number of years that faculty have taught within institution.54.5% respondents reported their highest level of academic achievement was a doctorate, while 36.4% reported holding a master's degree.Faculty was asked to mention about their affiliations with departments.33% respondents were from College of Business Administration, 6% were from College of Information systems, 18% were from Humanities, 30% respondents were from English department and 6% respondents were from Physical education.Faculty was also asked to express the number of years within this Private University; most of the faculty indicated that they had 3 or less than 3 years of experience (73%) in this Private University.The remaining faculty was grouped into three categories: 4-5 years (6%), 6-10 years (18%) and 11 years and more (3%).24.2% faculty reported that they were permanent and 73% reported that they were on one year contracts.[Insert Table 2 here]

Faculty Stress Index (FSI): Sources and Causes of Stress
The faculty stress was determined by using faculty stress index developed by Walter Gmelch.The FSI was the instrument used to measure faculty stress.The FSI consists of 45 items divided into five subscales: (a) Reward and Recognition, (b) Time constraints (c) Professional identity, (d) Departmental Influence, (e) Student interaction.Tables 3 to 7 present the descriptive statics for the FSI subscales and the corresponding FSI questions that form each subscale, as well as the means and standard deviation for each of the subscale questions.

Rewards and Recognition Subscale
The majority of stress derives from faculty rewards and recognition: inadequate rewards, insufficient recognition, and unclear expectations in all three areas of faculty responsibility-teaching, research, and service (Gmelch, 1993).Each of the questions in the subscale was scored based on the 5-point likert scale.The mean score for this subscale was 25.48.[Insert Table 3 here] Table 3 shows that receiving insufficient recognition for teaching performance was the area in which faculty felt the most pressured, with a mean score of 2.64.Other area in which faculty feels more pressure was inadequate time for teaching preparation and heavy work load, with a mean score of 2.48.The area where faculty felt the least pressured was relation with chairman/ Directors, with a mean score 1.55.Faculty member responded that their heads were supportive and they had friendly environment in their respective faculties.

Time Constraints Subscale
This factor reflects faculty members' feelings of insufficient time to keep abreast of current development, inadequate time for class preparation, interruptions from telephones, writing memos, attending meetings, too heavy workload, and job demands interfering with personal activities (Gmelch, 1993).For this subscale Time Constraints (Table 4), the mean score was 33.40.The area in which faculty members felt most pressure was attending meetings which take up to much of their time, with a mean score of 2.94, followed by not having enough time to keep abreast of current developments in their field, with a mean score of 2.88.The area where faculty reported the least pressured was being drawn into conflict between colleagues, with a mean score of 1.52.[Insert Table 4 here]

Departmental Influence Subscale
This subscale deals with attempts to influence chairs' decisions, resolving differences, and the overall lack of impact on departmental and institutional decision making (Gmelch, 1993).For the Departmental Influence subscale, the mean score was 15.3.All of the questions in this subscale (Table 5) showed similar results.The area in which faculty members felt most pressure was teaching workload affecting their performances, with a mean score of 2.70, followed by not knowing how my chair evaluate my performance, with a mean score of 2.21.The lowest pressure score reported by faculty was not having clear criteria for evaluating service activities, with a mean score of 2.09.

Professional Identity Subscale
This subscale deals with faculty reputation which is built on scholarship: publications, presentations to conferences, grants, and research.Faculty stress emanates from imposing high self-expectations (Gmelch, 1993).For the Professional Identity subscale, the mean score was 13.63.Imposing excessively high self-expectations was the area in which the respondents felt the most pressure, with a mean score of 2.91, while the least level of pressure was reported for unclear scope and responsibilities at their jobs, with a mean score of 2.06.[Insert Table 6 here]

Student Interactions Subscale
This factor relates to the interaction between students and colleagues.Faculty members find themselves in conflict with students over evaluation, advising and teaching to inadequately prepared students (Gmelch, 1993).For the Student Interaction subscale, the mean score was 9.67.The highest degree of pressure reported by the respondents was teaching/ advising inadequately prepared students, with a mean score was 2.82, followed by evaluating the performance of students area, with a mean score was 2.64.The least amount of pressure reported was conducting/ making class presentations, with a mean score of 2.09.[Insert Table 7 here]

Faculty Coping Stress Strategies
Along with the FSI questionnaire, one question was asked from the respondents about coping strategies for their level of stress.Question was: Please indicate to what extent each is a best way for coping stress by circling the appropriate responses.The descriptive statistics for each of the strategies is presented below, See Table 8. [Insert Table 8 here]

Exercises
Exercise found a common strategy among most of the faculty members.64% respondents reported that they overcome their stress through exercises (Such as indoor games, Gym and Aerobics) and yoga.

Spirituality
57% of faculty indicated that they followed the path of spirituality to cope their stress.

Time Management
In order to cope to cope with their stress, 57% faculty members responded that they do effective time management through absolute attention to their priorities.

Spend Time with Family
Spend time with positive people and family can reduce your stress.57% respondents indicated that they spend quality time with their families to cope their stress.

Conclusion and Recommendations
Table 9 presents the summary of all the subscales of Faculty Stress Index.For University Administration and Top management, it is important to focus their attention on faculty stress, especially on two areas (student Interactions and Professional Identity) to reduce the stress among the faculty members.[Insert Table 9 here] Care should be taken to make even remote faculty feel a part of the greater whole of this institution thorough regular communication and support.This will enhance their sense of affiliation to both the university and the individuals that comprise it, increase compliance with regulation and -ideally -positively impact occupational satisfaction

Table 1 .
Distribution of faculty by Age, Gender, Marital Status, Academic Ranks, Nationality

Table 2 .
Distribution of faculty by Academic degree, Teaching colleges, Job Status and Tenure

Table 7 .
Students' Interaction Subscale Table 8.Best way for coping stress

Table 9 .
Descriptive Statistics for the Faculty Stress Subscales: Total Means and Total Response Mean