Job insecurity, job satisfaction, social support and general health of educators in the Sedibeng West Municipal District

Abstract

Education is recognised worldwide as one of the most stressful work environments. Contributing factors include poor remuneration, workload. poor administrative support. Poor relationships with colleagues and superiors. a lack of respect for the profession and few career advancement opportunities. The result is that a high number of educators experience negative physical and psychological symptoms. Evidence from research suggests that the level of burnout among educators is increasing. that educators are experiencing lower levels of job satisfaction. That there is an increase in the levels of absenteeism and alcohol abuse of educators. Retention problems arise as more educators are leaving the profession at an earlier stage. that the relationship between the educator and learner are becoming more destructive and that the quality of our education is consequently on the decrease. The objective of this research is to determine the relationship between job insecurity. Job satisfaction, social support and general health of educators in the Sedibeng West Municipal District as well as to establish whether social support has a moderating effect on the relation between job insecurity and job satisfaction. The research method consists of a literature review and an empirical study. A cross-sectional survey design was used to collect the data. A random sample (n 312) was taken from educators in the Sedibeng West Municipal District. The Job Insecurity Questionnaire (J IQ) of De Witte. The Revised Minnesota Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (JSQ) by Weiss ct al... the Social Support Scale of Caplan and Goldberg and Hillier"s General Health Questionnaire (GI IQ) were used as measuring instruments. The statistical analysis was carried out with the SPSS-programme. The statistical methods utilised in the article consisted of descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients and multiple regression analyses were used to analyse the data. The results obtained for the four scales proved the measuring instruments to be reliable. The analysis of Pearson product-moment correlations in this study showed that Job Insecurity is negatively related to intrinsic, Extrinsic and Total Job Satisfaction as well as positively related to higher levels of Somatic, Anxiety and Insomnia, Social Dysfunctional and Depression related General Health, but all with a small effect. Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Total Job satisfaction however had a clear positive relation to Social Support received from a Supervisor and Extrinsic Job Satisfaction also correlated positively with Social Support received from Colleagues. The four General Health scales in turn had only small negative relations with Total Job Satisfaction. A regression analysis with Job Satisfaction as dependent variable le indicated that none of the Social Support constructs had a moderating influence on the negative effect that Job insecurity has on a person's experience of their job. Recommendations are made for the educators' profession and for future research purposes.