The purpose of this study was to explore the social workers? job stress,sleep quality and the relationship between them.The research method used for the study was a questionnaire survey.This study inquired 243 social workers who are serving at the social work department of the local governments. There were 176 usable responses in 179 questionnaires collected back in this study. The study instruments including a job stress scale and a modified Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index Scales?PSQIS?.
The result indicated that social workers with night duties are usually poor sleepers. The more they perceived the job stress the worse they perceived their sleep quality.
Job stress consist of five factors, for ? There are requests in deadline and speed in my work? in term of ?character for future?, for ? I am expected to play different role by people sometimes? in term of ?Person Role in the organization?, for ? I don?t have enough time to pursue further education caused by busy for my business? in term of ?expectance of the future?, for ? The lack support from supervisors or high-level managers? in term of ?relation between supervisors and colleagues?, and for ? There are not enough human resource in unit? in terms of ? organization structure and the mood in work?. They are most social workers? main source of job stress.
The result shows that most of the subjects go to bed about 12:00 pm in the midnight and wake up about 7:00 in the morning. The average time duration of lying down in the bed is 7 hours and the average duration of sleep is 6.16 hours.
Only 21.6% of the subjects surveyed are good sleepers, 78.4% of the subjects are poor sleepers.
The overall job stress level are significantly correlated with sleep quality?r=.258?.
In those factors, the ?expectance for future??r=.361?is the most correlation and second is the?character for jobs??r=.316?.Which means, the worse their sleep quality, the higher their job stress especially in the ?expectance for future? and ? character for jobs?. Related variables of ?night duties?and ?expectance for future?
could explain 15.4% of total sleep quality variation. Based on the results of this study, some suggestions were as follow:In terms of social workers:To proper time management and setting the priority for works.To enhance self-confidence and Be aware of meaning in helping people. In terms of social work department: To help social workers improving their career
plan, to build up a good incentive system and hire sufficient social workers, to establish a complete supervision system, and to opularize a reasonable furlough systems, The social workers can processes a day off after off the night duty.
