Relationship between Occupational Stress and Coping Strategies among Physical Education Teachers

The study aimed to examine the relationship between occupational stress and coping strategies adapted by physical education teachers. The sample consisted of 288 physical education teacher respondents working in secondary schools of Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka State. The respondents were responded to the Occupational Stress Index (Shrivastava and Singh, 1984) and Coping checklist by Rao et al.(1984). This Occupational Stress Index and Coping checklist are used with some modifications. The data were analyzed with the help of SPSS 17.0. Results revealed that five coping strategies out of 8 were best predicted occupational stress of the teachers. They are spiritual related coping, unproductive coping mechanism, unhealthy coping habits, social support coping, and physical activity related coping. Other coping strategies like problem solving coping strategy, healthy cognitive coping and high risk coping were less predicted.