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Feasibility and potentials of online support for stress management among secondary school teachers
Author(s) -
Leung Sharron S. K.,
Chiang Vico C. L.,
Chui Yingyu,
Lee Angel C. K.,
Mak Yimwah
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
stress and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1532-2998
pISSN - 1532-3005
DOI - 10.1002/smi.1347
Subject(s) - psychology , stress management , categorization , exploratory research , stress (linguistics) , social support , content analysis , medical education , coding (social sciences) , online discussion , applied psychology , medicine , social psychology , clinical psychology , computer science , world wide web , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , social science , artificial intelligence , anthropology
Teachers' work‐related stress is a widespread problem. Few studies have used online communications to provide support to teachers, and these were mainly focused on novice teachers. Here, we performed an exploratory study to examine whether the use of online forums by secondary school teachers in Hong Kong could provide social support to manage work‐related stress. Following 7 days of forum use, content analysis and post‐intervention evaluations were carried out to examine the anonymous communications of 75 secondary school teachers who participated in one of five online discussion forums. Consensus on the coding and categorization of the data was reached among three experienced researchers in qualitative analyses. The online forums were well received by the participants. Most participants reported that they received support from the forum and considered it useful for stress management. These results suggest that online support can be used for stress management among secondary school teachers. Further studies on using online approaches as stress management tools are warranted. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.