In this chapter, the researcher will outline the methods and processes conducted during the study. At first, there is going to be a depiction of the research framework, followed by the research procedures and finally the data collection and data analysis.
Research Framework
This research framework was developed in accordance with the literature review.
From the review, it was noticed that stress can have different impacts on individuals. As we can separate the good stress from the bad stress, this study has for aim to assess the potential stress dangers felt by the cashiers in France and Japan with for ultimate purpose their overall wellbeing. This research framework was developed in order to evaluate the potential correlation between risk factors, and the apparition of stress leading to potential burnout with for ultimate finality to find solutions for employees undergoing stress or burnout to find a sense of job satisfaction. The cross-cultural comparison helps the study assesses the situation in both countries.
The study uses a questionnaire in order to analyzed the potential relations between the below hypotheses.
This study has six hypotheses:
H1: Work Related Stress Risk Factor is significantly related to Stress H2: Work Related Stress Risk Factor is significantly related to Burnout H3: Stress has a significantly negative effect on Wellbeing
H4: Burnout has a significantly negative effect on Wellbeing
H5: Stress mediates the relationship between Work Related Risk factor and Wellbeing H6: Burnout mediates the relationship between Work Related Risk factor and Wellbeing
Figure 3-1. Framework of the study
Research Procedures
The research procedure is divided into twelve steps, represented in Figure 3.2. In the beginning of this study, the researcher has to clearly identify the problem. Following this step, the research of previous relevant literature on the topic must be researched.
With the abundance of past researches and data, a theoretical framework has been developed. Once the framework was found, the research developed a questionnaire in relation with the study’s questions. The developed questionnaire was translated into French and Japanese. The translation was evaluated through peer-review evaluation. The peer-reviewed questionnaire was tested during the pilot test. The pilot test highlighted the validity of the questionnaire, from which a final questionnaire draft has been developed.
The questionnaire was sent to both French and Japanese cashiers for completion. The collected data was run through SPSS for analysis. Finally the researcher focuses on the conclusion of his study, and leave an open-ended part with questions for future researches.
Peer-review
The study, being cross-cultural, has specific expectations. The researcher cannot assume that the desired population for both the pilot test and the data collection is speaking English. As a result, the questionnaire has to be translated into French and
Japanese. The researcher, by being French, and by having lived in Japan for several years has the language abilities to translate the questionnaire. After translating it, the questionnaire was submitted to two French and two Japanese, who reviewed the questionnaire and brought corrections to it. They all translated the questionnaire back to English and the researcher examined carefully whether everything was still corresponding. The reviewers all have undergone university and have taken English certifications in the past (TOEFL, TOEIC). The peer-reviewed questionnaire was then sent out for the pilot test.
Figure 3-2. The research process
Data Collection
The researcher has made the choice to use a questionnaire instead of an interview process, in order to maximize his data collection on the subject and statistically compare both cultures in an easier, clearer way. Statistical analysis allows the researcher to directly compare the results and highlight potential differences between Japan and France.
Pilot Test
The pilot test was conducted in both French and Japan on workers who have had at least a year of experience on their current job. The pilot test focused on retail workers, because they face the same aspect of customer confrontation and service selling with a must good forward attitude to represent a good image of their company, the same way cashier are doing. In order to have a significant impact between Japan and France the researcher has used retail workers working at H&M.
During the pilot test, 34 samples were collected. 21 questionnaires were collected in France and 13 were collected in Japan. 32 samples were relevant to the study. The 2 removed samples were part time students who were working in the organization in France. The pilot test comprises 19 valid samples from France and 13 from Japan. The objective of this pilot test was to achieve a Cronbach’s Alpha of at least .70 in order for the research to be acceptable. The pilot test was conclusive and none of the questions had to be removed.
Participants
Questionnaires were displayed within organizations directly towards cashiers. The desired population feedback for the official study is fixed between 130-170 cashiers per country, hence a total of approximately 300 cashiers.
The researcher found the population through his personal network in France, and with the help of local contacts in Japan. The researcher has worked as a cashier in the
past in a large French company (Auchan, Super U), therefore has used my ex-colleagues and my ex-managers as a mean to distribute the questionnaires. In Japan, some of the researcher’s former classmates were working part-time cashier jobs in large supermarkets (Aeon, Tsutaya, etc.), therefore they helped him reach out to local employees. The researcher decided to focus on very large companies rather than small supermarkets for the study. The companies chosen for the study are all economically viable and generate large profit.
The questionnaires were distributed directly within the organizations as a form of paper based questionnaire. Questionnaires were both translated in French and in Japanese in order to be sure of a clear understanding of the questions by the participants. The data collection started from July 2016, until December of the same year.
Instrumentation
The questionnaire developed for this study comprises elements from several pre-tested questionnaire.
The Perceived Stress Scale
It is a “psychological instrument for measuring the perception of stress” (Cohen, 1983). The questionnaire evaluates the how stress is perceived on individuals’ lives.
Work Related Stress Risk Factor: An Indicator Tool
R. Cousins et al (2004) developed this questionnaire, which “provided a means of identifying potential first items, as well as further validating the Indicator Tool in a very large nationally representative population and was also used for ascertaining baseline levels for measuring the anticipated population shift towards reducing work-related stress”.
This questionnaire is divided into 7 distinct factors:
• Demands: including such issues as workload, work patterns and the working environment.
• Control: how much control the employees have in the way they do their work.
• Managerial Support which includes the encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organization
• Support from colleagues which includes the encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the colleagues
• Relationships at work which includes promoting positive working practices to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behavior.
• Role: whether people understand their role within the organization and whether the organization ensures that the person does not have conflicting roles.
• Change: how organizational change (large or small) is managed and communicated in the organization.
The items refer to the different components of each factor. A distinction was made between managerial and peer support so that companies can assess and develop potential action plans according to the differences felt by the employees.
Workplace Wellbeing Questionnaire
The approach of wellbeing has been conducted with the previous work of Parker and Hyett in their wellbeing questionnaire (Parker & Hyett, 2011, p.395).
This questionnaire is broken into several parts, focusing on crucial aspects of potential wellbeing:
1. Work satisfaction
2. Organisational respect for the employee 3. Employer care
4. Intrusion of work into private life
The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory
The approach of burnout was implemented in the questionnaire with the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (Kristensen et al., 2005). According to the researchers of the CBI, the Cronbach’s alphas for internal reliability are very high (.85-.87).
In addition to the precedent works of researchers on the areas of wellbeing, stress and burnout, the researcher added a question related with physical pain felt at work in order to measure the additional potential physically negative impact of stress and as a measure of the toughness of the job. The researcher aims at finding potential differences between France and Japan in this area. Since the researcher has added new questions;
their validity needs to be tested. Therefore the questions were added in the pilot test. The pilot test has for object to determine the validation of the questionnaire sent out to the participants.
Data Analysis
The data for this research were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The questions from the questionnaire were coded using a 5-point Likert scale.
The researcher used SPSS to provide descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze and interpret the data collected. These statistical procedures allowed the researcher to present the relevance and importance of the study. The descriptive statistics helped the researcher to arrange the data information in a more interpretable form by calculating numerical indexes as averages. They include means and standard deviation of the data.
The researcher also analyzed the data using the correlation method to measure the strength of the association between continuous variables. In the case of this study, the researcher evaluated the relationships between work related stress risk factors and the two different mediators: stress and burnout. The researcher also analyzed the relationships between those mediators and the dependent variable that is wellbeing. Finally the research has evaluated the relation between stress and burnout.
The researcher also used hierarchical regression in order to test the effects of the independent variable (Work Related Stress Risk Factors) have on the mediators (Stress and Burnout) and the effect they have on the independent variable (wellbeing).