Article Review
Question
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Answer
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The aim of this article review is to examine an article by Hongxia et al. (2014) that highlights the problem of job stress among miners. The chosen title is relevant to the study, although it may have been better for Hongxia et al. (2014) to specify the country in which the study was conducted, which in this case is China. The problem that the study addresses is job stress of Chinese miners, and efforts to resolve it are made by developing intervention strategies. A succinct theoretical rationale for this problem has been provided through theoretical analysis and literature review, leading to the identification of seven job stressors, namely self-efficacy, role stress, job characteristics, occupational development, interpersonal relationship, work-family conflict, and organization mechanism. The problem of stress is significant because it is one of the major causes of the many serious mine accidents that have continued to affect China’s mining industry in recent times.
The study contains a brief literature review, which is relevant because it leads to the identification of seven hypotheses. In this literature review, Hongxia et al. (2014) assess the correlation between each of the seven aforementioned job stressors and miners’ working pressure. The following were the resulting hypotheses: Role stress and work-family conflict are found to be positively correlated with job stress while self-efficacy, job characteristics, occupational development, interpersonal relationship, and organization mechanism are found to be negatively correlated with miners’ working pressure. Thus, it is evident that hypothesis for the study were clearly identified and closely linked to the findings of the literature review. The study objective was also clearly stated; the researchers succinctly indicated that they were seeking to reveal the mode and path of influence between working pressure and job stressors among miners. Based on these findings, the study set out to propose viable corresponding intervention countermeasures with a view to predict and control miners’ job stress.
The research method used in the study is quantitative, with the questionnaire being the chosen research instrument. The questionnaire generated measurements of related variables for working pressure among miners. These measures were identified using the 5-point Likert Scale. Five mines within the mining area were selected randomly as the sample, they are supplied with 150 questionnaires, and 138 of them are recovered. The questionnaire is well structured in terms of demographic characteristics because it encompasses aspects of age, education, type work, seniority, and marital status.
One probable source of error is size sample. Five mines may constitute too small a sample given the enormity of China’s mining industry. The only way to control for this error is to widen the sample size, and this was not done in the study. Another probable source of error is the way a balance was struck in terms of different demographic factors. For instance, only 0.1 percent of the sample had university-level qualifications (bachelor’s level and above). One may expect the views to be different with a higher percentage of highly education respondents. Meanwhile the study effectively controls for this source of error by incorporating different percentage levels for the other demographic factors. For example, seniority is given considerable attention (respondents with 20 years and above in terms of seniority constitute 6.7 percent of the sample). The statistical technique used to evaluate the data was structural equation model (SEM). In SEM, the AMOS7.0 software was used to verify the hypothesis and to identify the path regression coefficient results. This technique was appropriate because it presented a very small standard error coefficient.
Results showed that role stress and work-family conflict are major causes of job stress. It also showed that working pressure among miners can be reduced by promoting self-efficacy, succinct job characteristics, organization mechanism, interpersonal relationships, and occupational development. A major limitation of the study is that the seven variables make up the hypotheses have not been fully explained using theoretical and practical examples and illustrations. This limitation has not been stated in the study. The study concludes that dealing with job-stress should be considered a long-term endeavor. These results and conclusions are applicable in my work environment because they requirement the involvement of all stakeholders, including manager. As a manager, I can contribute towards stress reduction by promoting self-efficacy among employees.
References
Hongxia, Li., Yongbin, F., Shuicheng, T. & Fen, L. & Huan, L. (2014). Study on the job stress of miners. Procedia Engineering, 84, 239 – 246.
