The purpose of this research was to explore the job stress experiences that Taiwan public banks employees had. In this mixed method research, data was collected through researcher, in-depth interview, and questionnaire.
Researcher
The researcher was one of the instruments in qualitative study (Lee, 2004). Apart from quantitative studies, questionnaire or test might be used for collecting data; in qualitative studies, the researcher was the instrument for collecting data. The qualitative researcher had the right to decide which interview questions to ask and in what order, what to observe, and what to write down (Mertens, 2005, p. 247).
The researcher was born in a public servants family with parents and relatives serving as public servants in bank. What’s more, both of the researcher’s parents were working in the Land Bank of Taiwan, which was one of the two public banks in Taiwan. Because of the growth background, which was related to this study, the researcher had an insider perspective. And, in order to decrease the potential bias, the researcher conducted multiple data collection methods. Through methodological triangulation, the research of this study endeavored to remain in a neutral tone.
In-depth Interview
In this study, in-depth interviews were employed as the first data technique to explore the public bank employees’ experience of job stress and their coping strategies. One of the most efficient ways to get the phenomenological data of job stress was through in-depth interviews with people who had direct and first hand experience (Patton, 2002). Interview was a research discussion which the researcher collected the first hand data from the participants through oral conversation (Chen, 2002, p, 221). It mainly focused on studying the participants’ perspectives on a specific “idea, program, or situation” (Boyce & Neale, 2006, p.3). For the structure of the interview; it could be classified into three types:
structured, unstructured, and semi-structured interviews (Bernard, 1988; Fontana & Frey, 1994). The semi-structured interview was adopted in this study. A semi-structured interview question didn’t govern the discussion but served as a guide during the interview. Since job stress was one of the sensitive topics that most people might not be willing to talk about in public, one on one interview were more feasible for researcher to receive detailed information from participants in this study. The flexibility of semi-structured interviews enabled responses to be entirely explored and let the researcher to be more responsive (Guion, Diehl, & McDonald, 2011).
Interview questions were developed based on the research framework. All the interview questions were open-ended, providing the participants with the opportunity to fully explain the answer. Those interview questions were written in Chinese because the targeted participants in the study were Chinese native speakers. The language that used in the interview process was Chinese as well. In order to make sure the participants understood each interview question, two to three graduate students in human resource major helped the researcher to check the wording and grammar of the questions. The interview questions had been checked by an expert, who was working in the public bank. Furthermore, the researcher conducted two pilot interviews to ensure the completeness of the interview questions. Based on the peer and expert review, and pilot test, the interview questions had been finalized after revision.
Before each interview, the researcher contacted the participants and explained the research content to them. Each participant had to read the outline of the interview questions beforehand; this helped them to think their job stress experience. Each face-to-face interview lasted about 30 to 40 minutes. All the interviews were tape-recorded and the researcher finished transcribing right after it. Furthermore, the researcher took notes and made a short summary during the interview. The verbatim transcription sent to the participants; making sure the transcription content was correct. The interviews were guided
by a list of interview questions (see appendix A). But, no particular order was strictly followed. First, participants were asked to illustrate the job stress they encountered in daily working life. Next, the participants answered follow-up questions about what the job stressors were. For example, “do you feel stressful about the your work?” or “ Could you please describe the job stress experience and explain why it is a problem for you?” Finally, the participants were asked about their coping strategies for reducing job stress.
Questionnaire
Though many studies of job stress and the stress-strain relationship have been conducted in quantitative studies (Mazzola, Schonfeld, & Spector, 2011), this study was conducted in mixed methods.
Based on the comprehensive literature review and professional suggestions of experts, the questionnaire was designed to collect data on Taiwan public bank employees’ job stressors, impacts of job stress, and their coping strategies. The questionnaire was composed of 4 parts written in Chinese.
In the first part of the questionnaire, respondents’ demographic information in six separate sections were inquired, including their sex, age, which public bank they worked for, years of working experiences in public banks, work department, and whether they were supervisors or not. The second section surveyed 15 sources of job stress the respondents perceived. It was a multiple-choice question, which accepted one or more job stressors of each respondent. The third section enquired about how the respondents’ mental and physical impacts of job stress. The scale used in this study was chosen from study conducted by Lin (2000), including 19 questions in five distinctive categories. There were dimension anxiety, fatigue, depression, dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem. Variables measuring job stress in Taiwan public bank employees were scored on a five-point scale, ranging from 5 for “strongly agree”, 4 for “agree”, 3 for “neutral”, 2 for “disagree”, and 1 for “strongly disagree”. Items 9, 12 to 19 were negatively worded test questions while the
others were positively ones. The last part of the questionnaire was another multiple-choice question; 9 choices were included to survey Taiwan public bank employee’s coping strategies when they had job stress.
Reliability
A reliability test was administrated to check the consistency of the measurement scales.
Only the third part of the questionnaire in this study had gone through the reliability test.
Cronbach’s alpha of all variables in this study was shown in Table 3.3. The results of Cronbach’s alpha were almost all over acceptable level (0.77 - 0.913), showing variables were nearly measuring the same construct and were consistent.
Table 3.3
Reliability with Cronbach’s alpha
Variables Cronbach’s Alpha Numbers of Items
Anxiety 0.864 4
Fatigue 0.77 4
Depression 0.651 4
Dissatisfaction 0.801 4
Low self-esteem 0.877 3
All 0.913 19