Establishment and Analysis of Chinese Judges’ Occupational Stress Scale

来源 :Frontiers of Legal Research | 被引量 : 0次 | 上传用户:vbwu
下载到本地 , 更方便阅读
声明 : 本文档内容版权归属内容提供方 , 如果您对本文有版权争议 , 可与客服联系进行内容授权或下架
论文部分内容阅读
  Abstract
  As the decision makers of cases, judges’ physical and mental health directly affects the outcome of the cases, and is related to the fairness and efficiency of the judiciary. Some studies have shown that the current level of mental health of judges is lower than people in general, and the rise of judges’ turnover rate in recent years also reflects their occupational stress from one aspect. This study selected 1,159 judges from seven regions including Beijing, Tianjin, Jilin, Liaoning, Shanxi, Hubei, and Henan for test, and conducted the questionnaire of occupational stress inventory-revised (OSI-R), established the occupational stress scale of Chinese judges, and conversed crude points to T points to grade the tension degree. Test results have showed that compared to groups of professionals and lawyers, the group of judges has a higher degree of tension, and seniority, gender, geography, age are the variables which affect the results of OSI-R questionnaire the most, and education and marital status affect secondly.
  Key words: Judges; Occupational stress; OSI-R; Scale
  Li, J., Ma, A., & Lin, Z. L. (2015). Establishment and Analysis of Chinese Judges’ Occupational Stress Scale. Frontiers of Legal Research, 3(1), -0. Available from http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/flr/article/view/10.3968/6655 DOI: 10.3968/6655
  INTRODUCTION
  Occupational stress arises from the interactions between the working environment and personal characteristics when a job requires more than a person’s capability (Ross & Alnaier, 1944). It is negative reaction to work stress that can lead to physical and psychological injury, and in turn affects the work (Addley, 1997). Zhan (1999) defined occupational stress as “under a certain occupational condition the psychological and physiological stress brought by the imbalance between objective demands and subjective response.”
  The research of occupational stress commenced in the 1960s, focusing on the influences of occupational stress on human physiological, psychological and behavioral functions (Hu, 1995). Some researches have shown that the influences of occupational stress on health, behavior and work efficiency have become an important international occupational health issue (Cartwright & Cooper, 1994). Excessive tension will lead to fatigue, anxiety, depression, decreased ability to work (Yang, et al., 2004), affect health, quality of life (Chandola, Brunner, & Marmot, 2006; Chen, Wang, & Yu, 2008), or even cause job fatigue and overwork caused death (Yang et al., 2007). For the evaluation of occupational stress, at this stage, a variety of scales have still been used as the main means. The occupational stress scales which have been used widely in domestic are Cooper’s OSI questionnaire introduced by Yu and Zhang (1997, 2000), and Osipow’s OSI-R questionnaire introduced by Li Jian et al. (2001). These questionnaires have comprehensive contents, rich information, and can implement an overall assessment of occupational stress (Lan & Zhang, 2014).   As the decision makers of cases, judges’ physical and mental health directly affects the outcome of cases and is related to the fairness and efficiency of judiciary. However, the contemporary Chinese judges are overwhelmed with unbearable work and psychological burden, low political and economic benefits, and request leave or early retirement, which subverts judges’ image in the minds of ordinary people. (Fu, 2013). Surveys also show that the mental health of judge group is worrisome, and have a higher degree of occupational stress and tension. (Dong, 2007; Gong, & Zhang, 2008; Yu, 2013) However, due to the small sample size and self-made questionnaire and SCL-90 test as the survey tool, these evidence-based investigations cannot comprehensively and objectively describe the occupational stress situation of the contemporary Chinese judges.
  1. OBJECT AND METHOD
  1.1 Object
  Use random sampling method. 1,200 judges were selected for testing from seven regions including Beijing, Tianjin, Jilin, Liaoning, Shanxi, Hubei and Henan. Excluding 41 people who did not answer questions completely, the remaining testees are 1159 people, including 662 males, 428 females, 69 with unreported gender, age 38.73 ± 9.59 years’ old, minimum 19 years’ old, and maximum 61 years’ old.
  1.2 Method
  1.2.1 Material
  Use Osipow’s (1998) Occupational Stress Inventory Revised Edition Questionnaire (OSI-R) to test. The scale has a good reliability and validity in China after partial modification. (Jian et al., 2001) The scale includes 3 subscales, 14 sub-items and 140 entries. Occupational Role Questionnaire (ORQ) includes 6 sub-items of role overload, role insufficiency, role ambiguity, role boundary, responsibility and physical environment. Personal Strain Questionnaire (PSQ) includes 4 sub-items of vocational strain, psychological strain, interpersonal strain and physical strain. Personal Resource Questionnaire (PRQ) includes 4 sub-items of recreation, self-care, social support and rational/cognitive. Each sub-item is constituted by 10 entries, and each entry is scored in 5 grades. A higher score in ORQ or PSQ indicates a higher degree of tension, and a higher score in PRQ indicates a higher capability to cope with stress.
  1.2.2 Process
  People from one area were placed in a soundproofed conference room for test. They were distributed with unified scales and requested to answer collectively. To ensure the authenticity and enthusiasm of the testees, they were asked to answer anonymously and remember the scale number. The test results would be informed by number. Finally, they were asked to fill out sex, age, education, length of service, marital status, court and other demographic information.   1.3 Statistical Method
  Use SPSS16.0 to conduct descriptive statistics, multiple regression analysis and variance analysis.
  2. RESULT AND STATISTICS
  2.1 Judges’ Occupational Stress Scale
  Judges’ occupational stress scale in Table 1.
  2.2 The Table Which Converts Coarse Points Into T Points Based on Judges’ OSI-R Scale
  Convert the coarse points in the occupational stress scale into a total score whose mean is 50 and standard deviation is 10 (T value) by linear conversion. Convert according to the formula (Osipow, 1998). x is the original score, x is the mean of the scale sample, s is the standard deviation. The table which converts coarse points into T points is omitted.
  2.3 Grading of Occupational Stress Degree
  According to the judges’ occupational stress scale, the table which converts the scale sample’s coarse points into T points, and the chart which converts OSI-R scale’s coarse points, we can grade occupational stress. The grading is as follows: high occupational stress, strain (T point = 70), middle occupational stress, strain (T point = 60 to 69), moderate occupational stress, strain (T point = 40 to 59), and lack of occupational stress, strain (T point <40); high lack of personal resources (T point <30), middle lack of personal resources (T point = 30 to 39), moderate personal resources (T point = 40 to 59), and strong personal resources (T point = 60). Specifically, we need to make score for each entry to get the score of each sub-item, convert them into T points, through drawing a chart to convert OSI-R scale coarse points, and use the T point of each sub-item to easily and accurately analyze the current occupational stress, personal strain and personal resources of individuals and groups. (Yang, Wang, Jin, & Lan, 2006).
  2.4 The Analysis on the Related Factors of Judges’ Occupational Stress
  2.4.1 The Multiple Regression Analysis on the Influencing Factors of Judges’ Occupational Stress
  Take gender, age, education, length of service, marital status and court as the independent variables, sub-items of OSI-R scale as the dependent variable to conduct multiple regression analysis stepwise, and the results are shown in Table 2. Table 2 shows that, in general, seniority, gender, geography and age are the variables which affect the outcome of OSI-R the most, followed by education and marital status. The variables which affect occupational role are geography, age, length of service and education successively; the variables which affect occupational stress are gender and age successively; the variables which affect personal resources are seniority, gender and geography successively.   2.4.2 Judges’ Occupational Stress Differences in Demography
  Take seniority, gender, geography, age, education, marital status and court as the independent variables, and take 3 subscales and sub-items as the dependent variables to conduct one-factor analysis of variance, the results are shown in Table 3.
  As can be seen from the table, length of service and age have significantly different scores on the three subscales; geography, education and court have significantly different scores on ORQ and PSQ; marital status receives remarkably different scores on ORQ and PRQ; gender on three subscales has not significantly different scores.
  Specifically, the judges with shorter than 10 years’ service length have the highest occupational stress. Female judges have higher scores than male judges on the sub-items of role insufficiency, role ambiguity, interpersonal strain and social support, have a lower score than male judges on physical strain; judges from Beijing generally have a higher occupational stress than other regions; the younger than 30-year-old judges generally have higher occupational stress and occupational tension than other age groups; the judges with a higher than postgraduate degree and a high school diploma generally have a higher occupational stress than the judges with other educational qualifications; the judges with a undergraduate degree have the most abundant resources to cope with stress; unmarried judges have a higher occupational stress than married, divorced and widowed judges; commercial court judges have the highest degree of occupational stress.
  DISCUSSION
  Comparing judges’ occupational stress scale with Yang Xinwei’s (2004) 984 professionals’ scale (hygiene, law, finance, education, sports, journalism, publishing and cultural workers), judges have higher scores on ORQ and PSQ (156.36, 99.18) than professionals (143.38, 84.80), and have lower score on PRQ (126.52) than professionals (129.84). This shows that compared to the professional groups, the judges have a higher degree of occupational stress and lower ability to respond to stress. However, due to the different survey years, social environment and life pace are different, thus the comparison of occupational stress may have errors. Compared to the 62 lawyers’ group (Li, Zhu, Chen, Xiong, & Zhang, 2013), judges have higher scores than lawyers on ORQ and PSQ (145.50, 88.52), lower score than lawyers on PRQ (127.90). This shows that compared to the lawyers, the judges have a higher degree of occupational stress and lower capacity to respond to stress. This explains to some extent that why in recent years a large number of judges left to become lawyers. Of course, due to the small sample size of the lawyer group, there might be bias in the result.   In the multiple regression analysis of the influencing factors of judges’ occupational stress, seniority, gender, geography and age are the variables which affect the outcome of OSI-R the most, followed by education and marital status, which is unlike the Southwest China Scale (Yang et al., 2007) that occupation, gender and education are the variables which affect the most, followed by age and length of service. On the one hand, this difference comes from the different variables collected, Chinese judge scale does not have the occupational variable, and the Southwest China scale does not have the geographical variable. On the other hand the qualification has a great impact in the Southwest China scale, while in the judge scale it only has the second impact. Possible reasons are that qualification difference in the judges group is small, which is mainly focused on undergraduate degree, graduate and above, with only 11 people having a high school diploma. In addition, the impact of gender on the two scales is great, which is in line with the existing study (Zhao & Xu, 1996; Qiu, 1999; Gu, Yu, & Li, 1999) that gender affects occupational stress.
  For the impacts of demographic factors on the occupational stress of judges, length of service and age show a high degree of consistency. 10 years seniority judges (lowest seniority group) and 30-year-old judges (minimum age group) have higher scores than others on the total occupational role questionnaire, sub-items of role overload, role insufficiency, role ambiguity and role boundary, total personal strain questionnaire and sub-items of vocational strain and interpersonal strain, which is inconsistent with the conclusion of the previous study (Yang, 2004) that 40-year-old group and older than 50-year-old group have higher scores on the total occupational role questionnaire, sub-items of role overload, role boundary and role insufficiency, that higher seniority judges have more pressures on workload, and young people more adapt to environment. This may be determined by the features of judges and the internal organization. Judges working on the first line to handle cases are mostly young judges. They are struggling to cope with a lot of difficult and complicated cases (Yu, 2013), and often need to participate in some auxiliary work such as “maintain social stability” (Lu, 2011). While as the age grows, the majority of judges no longer hear cases after taking leadership positions, which in turn increase the workload of young judges (Yu, 2013).   Female judges have higher scores than male judges on the sub-items of role insufficiency, role ambiguity and interpersonal strain, which is in consistent with the Southwest China occupational stress scale study (Yang et al., 2007) that male judges have higher scores than female judges on all sub-items (excluding physical environment) and total stress reaction scores. Possible explanations are that female judges are a relatively special professional group, who works on the first line of trial (Song, 2009), and often uses their female superiority to try juvenile offenders (Chen, 2008), and protects women and children’s rights (Wang, 2007). In the face of these special parties, they often have rational and emotional contradictions, and are easy to have role insufficiency and role ambiguity. On the physical strain male judges have a higher score than female judges, which are consistent with the Southwest China scale study (Yang et al., 2007), perhaps this is because women are more focused on health care compared to men. On the sub-item of social support, female judges have a higher score than male judges. On the one hand, judge is a more stable job and has a higher social status. Women are more likely to choose a stable job. On the other hand, although judges have experienced a number of pay rises as civil servants, their wages still belong to the middle level (Yu, 2013). While men often need to take more responsibility for their families, so they get relatively lower supports from family and society.
  Beijing judges have higher scores on the occupational role, occupational stress questionnaire and sub-items than other regions. Northeast China and Tianjin have lower scores. This is more consistent with people’s feeling. As a political, economic and cultural center, Beijing has a high population density, large cases and a more fast-paced life, receives more attention from media and the public, thus judges are more likely to have an occupational tension.
  The judges with a postgraduate degree or above qualifications have higher scores than the judges with an undergraduate degree on occupational role and OSI-R, which is inconsistent with the conclusion of the previous studies (Yang, 2004) that lower level of education judges have higher scores on both occupational role and OSI-R. Possible explanations are that on the one hand, judges generally receive high education, excluding 11 judges with a high school diploma, the others all have an undergraduate degree, graduate degree or above. They are capable to properly handle general cases, and it’s not likely to be difficult to deal with the work as those who with low educational levels. Another more important reason is that because of the low salary of judges, narrow rising channel (Yu, 2013), judge occupational risks, lack of a sense of work accomplishment (Dong, 2007) and other reasons, especially compared with the lawyer group who has similar professional levels but high incomes, the judges who have higher educational levels are more vulnerable to fall into contradictions, have higher occupational tension, and a lot of them even leave and switch jobs, which is also in line with the effort-reward imbalance model (ERI) proposed by Siegrist (1996) .   Different court judges are significantly different on occupational role score and OSI-R score, where commercial court judges have the highest score. This may be due to the irrational proportion of cases to people in court authorities, which are consistent with the previous findings (Yu, 2013).
  CONCLUSION
  By establishing judges’ occupational stress scales and grading standards, we have found that seniority, gender, geography and age are the variables which affect OSI-R questionnaire results the most, and education, marital status affects secondly. Younger judges, and those with a shorter length of service have higher occupational stress; female judges have higher scores than male judges on the sub-items of role insufficiency, role ambiguity, interpersonal strain and social support, and have a lower score than male judges on the sub-item of physical strain; the judges from Beijing tend to have high occupational stress; the judges with a high school diploma, postgraduate degree or higher degree have more occupational stress than the judges with an undergraduate degree; unmarried judges have high occupational stress; commercial court judges have high occupational tension.
  REFERENCES
  Addley, K. (1997). Occupational stress: A practical approach (pp.11-13). Oxford, Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.
  Ai, Q. P. (2014, July 29). “Professional judge” or “excellent judge” – A discussion on the judge post system in the program of the fourth five year reform. Guangming Net People’s Court Channel. Retrieved from http://court.gmw.cn/html/article/201407/29/161241.shtml
  Cartwright, S., & Cooper, C. L. (1994). No hassle! Taking the stress out of work (pp.7-12). London: United Kingdom Century Limited.
  Chandola, T., Brunner, E., & Marmot, M. (2006). Chronic stress at work and the metabolic syndrome prospective study. BMJ, 332, 521-525.
  Chen, B. H. (2008). A discussion on juvenile judicatory and the role of women judges. Huxiang Forum, 4, 103-104.
  Chen, W. Q., Wong, T. W., & Yu, I. T. (2008). Association of occupational stress and social support with health-related behaviors among chinese offshore oil workers. Journal of Occupational Health, 50(3), 262-269.
  Dong, X. J. (2007). The analysis of current psychological stress of basic level judges and remission countermeasures studies. Application of Laws, 1, 27-31.
  Fu, X. J. (2013, September 3). A cold thinking on the leave of judges [electronic version]. People’s Court News. Http://www.qstheory.cn/zl/bkjx/201309/t20130903_267423.htm   Gong, X. L., & Zhang, Q. L. (2008). The psychological health survey analysis of judges at basic and middle levels. Chinese Journal of Healthy Psychology, 16(1), 88-90.
  Hu, B. S. (1995). Current situation of occupational psychological tests. Modern Preventive Medicine, 22(2), 68-70.
  Jia, X. F., Yu, S. F., & Li, K. R. (1999). Comparative studies on the occupational stress of doctors and nurses. Chinese Journal of Behavioral Medical Science, 8(1), 23-25.
  Lan, Y. J., & Zhang, Y. (2014). The current situation of occupational stress studies and prospects. Journal of North Sichuan Medical College, 29(1), 2-6.
  Li, J., Lan, Y. J., Wang, Z. M., Wang, M. Z., Wang, M. C., & Liu, G. Q. (2001). The reliability and validity verification of Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised (OSI-R). Chinese Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Diseases, 19(3), 190-193.
  Li, J., Zhu, T., Chen, S. N., Xiong, J., & Zhang, S. S. (2013). A study on the relationship between lawyers’ occupational stress and career quality. Chinese Journal of Disease Control & Prevention ISTIC, 17(9), 806-808.
  Osipow, S. H. (1998). Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised Edition (OSI-R) (pp.1-10). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources Inc.
  Qiu, D. P., Luo, X. S., Zhang, Q. Z., Zeng, S. H., Ma, L. J., & Zhou, T., et al. (1999). A discussion on mall workers’ occupational stress and the influencing factors. Shanghai Preventive Medicine, 11(10), 445-448.
  Ross, R. R., & Alnaier, E. M. (1994). Intervention in occupational stress (pp.12-14). London: Sage Publication.
  Siegrist, J. (1996). Effort-reword imbalance at work and health. Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being, 2, 261-291.
  Song, H. P. (2009). Women judges’ professional image positioning and shape. Chinese Trials, 6, 100-100.
  Wang, X. H. (2007) Give full play to the role of women judges to actively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of women and children. Chinese Women’s Movement, 1, 26-27.
  Yang, X. W. (2004). Occupational stress mode scale and its application studies (PhD Thesis). Sichuan University.
  Yang, X. W., Liu, Z. J., Pang, X. H., Li, W., Zhao, P. Q., & Bai, S. Y., et al. (2007). The occupational stress scale of southwest China and the grading standards. Chinese Journal of Psychological Health, 21(4), 233-236.
  Yang, X. W., Wang, Z. M., Jin, T., & Lan, Y. J. (2006). The occupational stress scale of sales staff, security staff and skilled workers and the application form development. Health Research, 35(5), 594-598.   Yang, X. W., Wang, Z. M., Lan, Y. J., Wang, M. Z., & Yao, W. (2004). Studies on the occupational stress and work ability changes of workers with different individual characteristics. Health Research, 33(1), 5-8.
  Yu, S. F., & Zhang, R. (1997). The trial results analysis of Occupational Stress Test Indicators OSI. Chinese Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Diseases, 15(2), 96-97.
  Yu, S. F., Zhang, R., Ma, Q. L., Liu, C., Deng, Y. C., & Gu, G. Z. (2000). A study on occupational stress measurement tools. Henan Medical Research, 9(2), 171-174.
  Yu, X. (2013). The underlying causes of judges’ occupational stress and organizational support improvement. Judicial Forum, 29(4), 53-58.
  Zhan, C. L. (1999). Labor psychological research and the standardization issue of concepts and terminology. Labor Medicine, 16(1), 37-38.
  Zhao, G. Q., & Xu, Q. M. (1996). A study on the secondary school teachers and medical staff’s occupational psychological tension and the influencing factors. Chinese Journal of Psychological Health, 10(4), 157-159.
其他文献
[摘 要]文章以民营银行的代表民生银行为例,运用罗伯特·C·希金斯的可持续增长模型对我国民营银行的可持续增长进行实证研究。研究发现,样本银行的实际增长率高于同期可持续增长率,继续进一步分析提出了加快流程银行建设、发展零售业务和中间业务、发挥整体经营协同效应、转变融资模式、加强内部控制与风险管理等建议。  [关键词]民营银行;可持续增长;民生银行  引言  2012年5月,中国银监会发布发《关于鼓励
期刊
[摘 要]日趋严峻的大学生就业形势已经成为国内亟需解决的问题。随着网络经济的日益发展,大学生网络创业逐渐成为解决大学生就业问题的一种方式,对促进以创业带动就业具有重要意义。笔者在充分调研的基础之上,总结出大学生网络创业的现状,并制定适当的网络创业引导策略,为大学生自主创业和高等学校创业教育提供有针对性的决策参考。  [关键词]大学生;网络创业;创业前景;保障措施  大学生网络创业不是偶然,而是经济
期刊
[摘 要]检察机关作为国家的法律监督机关,公正文明执法是社会公众对司法信任和服从的基础。积极利用互联网与人民群众互动交流,为人民群众服务,接受人民群众监督,对提升检察机关的公信力有着十分重要的作用。但是,在实践中尚有许多问题需要解决。笔者尝试从互联网的利用与舆情管理的角度来提出在互联网时代提升检察机关公信力的可行之路。  [关键词]网络时代;检察机关公信力;互联网运用;舆情管理  司法具有高度的公
期刊
[摘 要]社会主义市场经济的建立和完善,使我国行政管理的客观环境发生了变化。文章通过介绍权变理论的起源,概述了权变理论的卓越贡献,结合我国领导方式存在的问题,对变革行政领导方式提出了几点建议。  [关键词]权变理论;领导方式;变革;行为  权变理论认为,不存在一种固定不变、普遍适用的领导理论与领导行为方式,领导者的有效性有赖于领导者、被领导者和环境这三个因素的交互关系而定。在我国的行政领导实践中,
期刊
怎么是你一个人出来?没有人迎接吗?
期刊
图1-3是我们常见的马的形象。漫画的拟人画法就是把动物或物体按人的喜怒哀乐、行为举止去画,可以画读书、看报、吹打弹拉的,但要尽最符合你要画的动物或物体的特点,把不可能变为可能,如图4-13。你还可以画出更多拟人画法的马,希望全国的小朋友们也可以把你用拟人画法画的动物或物体寄给我们,我们会在漫画课堂栏目中选登发表的。
期刊
Abstract  As a kind of typical public law discrimination, institutional discrimination brings violation to the citizens’ equal rights. Therefore, discrimination body’s legal liability shall be pursued
期刊
[摘 要]新《刑事诉讼法》在吸收学术研究成果、总结实践经验基础上,设立专章规定了公诉案件刑事和解程序,为公诉机关对符合条件的刑事和解案件作出建议法院从轻处理或者不起诉决定奠定了法律基础,有利于化解社会矛盾、节约司法资源。文章从各地对刑事和解政策的探索运用出发,结合新《刑事诉讼法》对刑事和解制度的创新性规定,探讨刑事和解中检察机关的角色定位,并提出了对在新刑诉法背景下,公诉机关刑事和解案件办案模式的
期刊
Abstract  Reasonable exercise of minor’s custody is of vital significant to mental and physical health of the minors. In reality, due to failure of some guardians to fulfill the guardianship responsib
期刊
Abstract  Ever since the mid 1990s, the trial session at the people’s court has undergone a development from complete reliance on the sentence to a combination of mediation and sentence employed in pr
期刊