Abstract
Objectives : The study set out to analyze correlations between emotional labor and job stress among dental hygienist, who have direct and lasting relationships with patients in dental clinic, and provide basic data to resolve stressors and manage stress. Methods : A survey was taken among dental hygienists working at dental clinics, and 200 questionnaires were used in analysis. The gathered data were put to Cronbach's alpha with the SPSS WIN12.0 program to test the reliability of the inventories to measure their emotional labor and job stress. In addition, correlation analysis was conducted to examine relations between the items of emotional labor and those of job stress along with regression analysis to examine relations between emotional labor and job stress. Finally, t-test and One-way ANOVA were conducted to test mean differences in the job stress items according to the degrees of emotional labor with the statistical significance level set at 0.05. Results : 1. The measurement tool used in the study recorded 0.7 for all the areas of Cronbach's alpha for internal reliability and thus achieved high reliability. 2. The overall mean of emotional labor was 2.74, which indicates that the dental hygienists had 'average' or higher stress for emotional labor. 3. Emotional labor had statistically significant relations with educational background, place of work, motivation to choose to be a dental hygienist, and religion of their general characteristics. 4. There was statistical significance in relations between general characteristics and job stress according to educational background, position at work, and experience with change of occupation. 5. The correlations between emotional labor and the stress areas were analyzed. As a result, emotional labor was in positive(+) correlations with job demand, lack of job autonomy, relational conflict, job instability, organizational system, and corporate culture. In addition, regression analysis was conducted to test causal relations between emotional labor and job stress. The results indicate that there were positive(+) influences between emotional labor and job stress. Conclusions : The results show that emotional labor can serve as a mediating variable for job stress in dental clinic. Thus both dental clinics and dental hygienists need to have ways to deal with job stress derived from emotional labor in which they are forced to process their emotions according to the dental clinics' demands, properly. The study will hopefully trigger ongoing follow-up researches on the deployment of dental hygienists according to their job characteristics and the situational variables to alleviate the negative results of emotional labor.
