Abstract

As becoming an ageing society, researchers examined the main effect and the interaction effect of the job stress and hardiness on physical and mental health of nursing home employees in Korea. The participants were 361 nursing home employees (64 males and 297 females) from 17 nursing homes located in Seoul and the suburbs, whose ages ranged from 17 to 65. The psychological tests used in this research included the following: Karasek's Job Content Questionnaire, Bartone's Hardiness Scale: Short-Form, Chon's Physical Symptom Scale, Han & Jang's Scale for Perceived Health, Negative Affect Self-Statement Questionnaire, and the Korean Version of Cambell's Subjective Well-being Scale. Results indicated that care-assistants experienced more job stress than Registered Nurses and other employees. Most of sub-variables of job stress and hardiness significantly related to sub-variables of physical and mental health of nursing home employees. Step-wise regression analyses indicated that job stress accounted for the most variance of physical symptoms, while only hardiness was significant predictor for perceived health and depression and it accounted for the 34% of the variances for subjective well-being. There were 2-way interactions in subjective well-being by job stress and hardiness. It means that hardiness plays the role of moderating effect on the relation of job stress to subjective well-being. Suggesting the effect of job stress and hardiness on health, the possible reasons for inconsistent results of various effects of hardiness on health or diseases were discussed.