Principal Investigator:
Prof. Lau Siu Ying Patrick (Department of Educational Psychology)
Co-Investigators:
Prof. Jane E. Myers (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the United States)
Prof. Yuen Man Tak (The University of Hong Kong) and Prof. Chan M. C. Raymond (Hong Kong Baptist University)
As the traditional studies on the teachers' mental health are mainly on the negative pathological complaint, there is a need for a sound knowledge base on teacher wellness (Lau, Yuen, Chan, Myers & Lee, 2008). The present study, therefore, has three objectives:
(1) to develop a wellness model and validate the wellness construct and its measurement (e.g. 5F-Wel) among teachers in a Chinese society, (2) to study the overall wellness situation of Hong Kong teachers and the relationships between wellness and teachers' personal characteristics, (3) to study the relationships among wellness, teacher occupational stress and purpose in life.
Interviews will be conducted with senior school teachers to collect how they view teacher wellness. Data collected will serve as discussion guidelines for subsequent focus group study of teachers who will share their views on wellness and the items in 5F-Wel (Myers & Sweeney, 2005). Following this, concurrent validity, criterion-referenced validity, factorial validity and other psychometric properties of the translated 5F-Wel will then be studied. It is hoped that with these studies and the fine-tuning of some items, a Chinese version of 5F-Wel with sound psychological properties can then be obtained. In the main study, about 2,000 teachers randomly drawn from local primary and secondary schools will be involved in a survey studying (1) the relationships between wellness and teachers' demographic characteristics; and (2) the relationships among wellness, teacher occupational stress and purpose in life. The participants will be asked to answer a questionnaire comprising the Chinese version of the 5F-Wel, Teacher Occupational Stress Questionnaire (Lau, 2002), Purpose in Life Questionnaire (Crumbaugh, 1968; Shek, 1988), and teachers' demographic variables. Hopefully, the findings will help to develop a new model of wellness among Hong Kong teachers grounded in the existing evidence-based holistic wellness paradigm and characteristics of Chinese culture. Findings will also yield positive insights into the nature and contributors of wellness and the wellness situations of teachers, particularly in Hong Kong.
References
Crumbaugh, J.C. (1968). Cross-validation of Purpose in Life Test based on Frankl's concepts. Journal of Individual Psychology, 24, 74-81.
Lau, P.S.Y. (2002). Teacher burnout in Hong Kong secondary schools. PhD dissertation. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Educational Psychology. pp. 416. UMI Microform no. 3052101
Lau, P.S.Y., Chan, R.M.C., Yuen, M., Myers, J.E., & Lee, Q.A.Y. (2008). Wellness of teachers: A neglected issue in teacher development. In J.C.K. Lee, & L.P. Shiu (Eds.), Developing teachers and developing schools in changing contexts (Chap. 5, pp. 101-116). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.
Myers, J.E., & Sweeney, T.J. (2005). Manual for the Five Factor Wellness Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Mindgarden, Inc.
Shek, D.T.L. (1988). Reliability and factorial structure of the Chinese version of the Purpose in Life Questionnaire. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 44(3), 384-392.
