Work related stress and performance among lectures in Nkumba University, Entebbe

Abstract

The study set out to investigate work related stress and lecturer performance in Nkumba University, Wakiso District, the research explored the effect of work related stress on teaching, research for self development and student supervision among the lecturers of Nkumba University. The study set out to establish the effect of work related stress on lecturers’ ability to teach, to find out the effect of work related stress on lecturers’ ability to carry out research for self development and as well as to find out the effect of work related stress on lecturers ability to supervise students on their research programmes in Nkumba University. The researcher used self-administered questionnaire that were administered to all the teaching staff in Nkumba University who were randomly selected. The total number of respondents was 57. The data was analysed basing on simple statistics such as frequency counts, arithmetic means, standard deviations and percentages from frequency tables and descriptive statistics that is at univariate level and at bivariate level work related stress was correlated with lecturer performance using Pearson’s correlation method to analyse correlation between two numerical variables.

The findings as by the hypotheses indicated that the lecturers face a number of stressing conditions that affect their performance in the University. The findings revealed that lectures’ ability to teach was not affected by work related stress. The findings suggested that lecturers’ ability to carry out research was not affected by work related stress in Nkumba University. The findings from this research showed that student supervision was not affected by work related stress.

Therefore the researcher concluded that work related stress did not affect lecturers’ ability to teach students, carry research development and supervise students in Nkumba University. The following recommendations were derived from the above conclusions. Nkumba University should for now not bother so much about current lecturers’ stress workloads, pay and job security since they do not seem to negatively affect performance of lecturers in terms of ability to teach, carry out research and supervise students.