Revisiting the Buffering Hypothesis: Social Support, Work Stressors, Stress Related Symptoms, and Negative Affectivity in a Sample of Public School Teachers
This study tests if forms of social support have a buffering effect on the relationship between actual workplace risk job stress and psychosomatic work stress taking into account Negative Affectivity (NA) The buffering effect maintains that social support acts a moderator variable that enables individuals to withstand the adverse impact of work stress on psychological states such as psychosomatic stress and job stress. Additionally, as suggested in the job stress literature, a measure that assesses an individual's predisposition to be effected by the presence of work stressors, negative affectivity, which is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self concept, is included. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and confidence while high negative affectivity with unease and lack of confidence. Negative affectivity may influence the degree to which stressful events affect the level of stress experienced by individuals. Thus previous studies that report a relationship between work stressors and work related stress symptoms may overstate the actual impact that stressors have because negative affectivity has not been incorporated as a control variable. This study will also examine whether social support continues to buffer the relationship between stressors and stress symptoms when NA is included in the model. Based on the relevant literature, hypotheses are stated on the effect that NA has on the stressor stress symptom relationship and if social support buffers (moderates) the relationship between stressors with NA as a model variable. These hypotheses are tested with a sample of urban, public school teachers from a large metropolitan school district. Implications of study outcomes and suggestions for future research are discussed.