Abstract

In order to better understand stress and coping among Egyptian child protection social workers, this study aimed to: 1) assess the levels of burnout, secondary trauma and compassion satisfaction they experience; 2) discover to what extent they relied on religion and social support to cope with stress; and 3) to see if religion and social support along with gender and years of experience explained levels of burnout, secondary trauma and compassion satisfaction. A total of 80 male and female child protection social workers who had varying years of experience were given scales that measured their overall job-related stress levels (measured by ProQOL, version 5) as well as their use of religious and emotional and instrumental social support coping strategies (measured by two scales from the COPE Inventory). In addition, participants listed the top three things they did when feeling work-related stress. It was found that child protection social workers exhibited average levels of job-related stress (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) and high levels of compassion satisfaction. It was also found that they used religious coping more than coping through emotional or instrumental social support. Gender and years of experience did not have a significant effect on use of the three types of coping strategies or on the levels of stress (burnout and secondary traumatic stress) or compassion satisfaction. To see if the coping strategies of instrumental social support, emotional social support and religion along with gender and years of experience were predictors of burnout, secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction, multiple regression analyses were run. Results showed that only religion significantly predicted higher levels of burnout and only emotional social support significantly predicted higher levels of secondary trauma. It also showed that both religion and instrumental social support significantly predicted higher levels of compassion satisfaction. The implications of this research for reducing stress and supporting successful coping are discussed.

Department

Psychology Department

Degree Name

MA in Community Psychology

Graduation Date

6-1-2019

Submission Date

February 2019

First Advisor

Forden, Carie

Committee Member 1

Amer, Mona

Committee Member 2

Barsoum, Ghada

Extent

89 p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Rights

The author retains all rights with regard to copyright. The author certifies that written permission from the owner(s) of third-party copyrighted matter included in the thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study has been obtained. The author further certifies that IRB approval has been obtained for this thesis, or that IRB approval is not necessary for this thesis. Insofar as this thesis, dissertation, paper, or record of study is an educational record as defined in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 USC 1232g), the author has granted consent to disclosure of it to anyone who requests a copy.

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Approval has been obtained for this item

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