Development Of The Occupational Stressor Scale Of Military Flight Personnel

Modern Chinese society is changing dramatically and rapidly, with quicker and quicker living tempo, more and more advanced technology, more and more fierce competition. Chinese people are undergoing all kinds of pressures, especially occupational stress. Too much occupational stress can not only do bad to people's health physiologically and psychologically, but also influence their work performance. As it can be referred in large scope, occupational stress has been focused in many studies, including biology, medicine, psychology and behavioral science, management science etc.Military flight personnel are important component of army, with special tasks. Flying as a profession has high pressures. And it is featured as difficult, intensive, dangerous and strict. Too much stress is a key psychological factor for most flying accidents, because it can decline flight personnel'health physiologically and psychologically, and influence their flying activities. Therefore realizing and trying to reduce military flight personnel'occupational stress have significant meaning to keep their health and secure their flying activities. However, there is few research on military flight personnel' occupational stress in our country, let alone appropriate scales to evaluate it. Consequently, it's very important to establish our own mechanism to evaluate military flight personnel'occupational stress.In this study a scale was constructed on the basis of literature analyzing and semi-structured interviews and experts'assessment. Then critical ratio, correlates, and frequencies of endorsement were used to select items. Construct validity was evaluated using exploratory factor analysis. Four-factor structure was confirmed, including security of flying, professional expectation, interpersonal relationship, and work burden, accounting to 60.39% of variances. Cronbach a was used to test internal consistency reliability. a of the whole scale was 0.92, a of four subtests vary between 0.80 to 0.88. Correlates of separate subtest with whole scale vary between 0.74 to 0.84. a of each subtest was larger than correlates between itself with other subtests, and correlates between each item with the belonging subtest are greater than ones between it with other subtests. In a word, the reliability and validity of this scale are satisfying. And this scale can be used as an instrument to assess our military flight personnel'occupational stressor, and can be used in related studies and psychological work.The scale constructed in this study was used to investigate military flight personnel'occupational stress. On the basis of the investigation, flight personnel'personal statistic factors, which may influence their occupational stress, were analyzed. Results implied that, mild stress existed (1.46±0.55) as a whole. And there is moderate stress on professional expectation, mild stress on the other three dimensions. Analysis of differences between military flight personnel'occupational stress showed that personal statistic factors don't influence the degree of military flight personnel'occupational stress, including ages, marriage, kinds of airplanes, flying time, and headship. Flight personnel with different ages or flying in different kinds of airplanes have significant differences on working burden (p<0.01). Flight personnel with different headship have significant differences on interpersonal relationship (p<0.01). And we can get reversed U type relationship between age and flying time from comparing the means of different subtests. Married flight personnel feel lower pressures than unmarried ones on most factors, excluding greater on work burden. Occupational stress varies from greatest to lowest for flight personnel of different kinds of airplanes as from Fighters, to Bombers, to Attack planes, to Trainer aircrafts, to Transporters, to Helicopters. Flight personnel with no headship have greater stress than ones with headship on most subtests, except lower on work burden.