The Role of Somatic and Posttraumatic Symptoms in Mediating between Teachers’ Workplace Victimization, and Job Burnout: A Structural Equation Modeling

Introduction: Teachers’ workplace victimization (TWV) is a grave and disturbing problem prevalent in various countries throughout the world. The literature has identified individual and organizational factors that may contribute to TWV, including workload; conflict; and a lack of support among school staff members, seniority, and teacher's gender. TWV is known to have many negative consequences for teachers in terms of occupational (e.g., burnout) and health outcomes (e.g., somatic and posttraumatic symptoms). In addition, TWV impairs the healthy development and learning of students. Although extreme events of TWV gain significant attention in the media and increased public concern, less serious events occur more frequently, even daily, and impair teachers’ functioning, underscoring the importance of addressing this issue. Given this background, it is important to examine the relations between teachers’ victimization and its outcomes, such as somatic and posttraumatic symptoms and burnout. Furthermore, from an organizational perspective, as well as teacher personal one, it is important to understand whether victimization leads directly to burnout, or may symptoms palay a mediation role? In other words – is victimization a deterministic factor, or does personal resilience play a role in its outcomes?

Method: This study was based on a survey of 366 Arabic and Jewish teachers in Israel. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the structure of associations between TWV, its antecedents and consequences. Sampling was a convenience purposive sample, directed at maximizing variation across municipalities. The survey instrument included variables adapted from the Client Violence Questionnaire (CVQ), PTSD, Somatic Symptoms, and Burnout. Analyses of SEM models was carried out using AMOS-25 program.

Findings: The findings indicate that the teachers who reported being victimized and suffered from somatic and PTSD symptoms experienced burnout, whereas the teachers who reported victimization and had no symptoms did not experience burnout. This outcome indicates the important role of symptoms as mediators between victimization and burnout. A significant relationship of teachers’ personal and professional characteristics with victimization, symptoms, and burnout also emerged.

Discussion: Whereas the phenomenon of aggression towards service providers, including teachers in well-known and studied, there is still more to learn about the outcomes of such aggression on the individual and organizational level. The current study indicates that aggression by itself does not necessarily predict organization outcomes such as burnout. Rather, aggression that results in personal suffering in the form of PTDS and somatic symptoms is a necessary mediator of such personal and organization outcome, while those who are resilient enough to overcome and not suffer from symptoms are not afflicted by burnout. The need to focus on both cessation of aggression on the one hand, while increasing personal resiliency on the other is discussed.