Evaluation of the quick check for the identification of mental stress by teaching personnel in NRW

Status:

completed 02/2010

Aims:

Mental stress experienced by teaching personnel is to be identified in the future by means of a quick-check method forming part of risk assessments conducted in schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. The quick check is an instrument based upon the BAAM questionnaire. BAAM is a method for the evaluation of job content, work organization, man management and social relationships.
The quick check was completed by teaching staff in schools. In it, teachers estimated the scale of the mental stress which they experience. The individual results were totalled and reported back to the school administration and the teachers' council as an overall estimation of the mental stress at a school. Based upon this assessment, the school administration and the teachers' council agreed on measures for the avoidance/reduction of hazards causing mental stress (Blume & Schleicher, 2008). For this purpose, they have four recommended procedures at their disposal by which to select a measure.
In a first project the quick check was already validated with the BAAM. Following this measure, the process of implementing the quick check is to be partially evaluated. Validation and evaluation have been commissioned by the public-sector accident insurer of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Activities/Methods:

Before the quick-check procedure was used in schools throughout North Rhine-Westphalia, information was obtained on whether the instrument and the procedure for the identification of mental stresses are comprehensible and accepted by the parties involved, and whether the effort is considered reasonable. The evaluation thus particularly concerns the process for investigation and assessment of the mental stresses, and the identification of appropriate measures based on the results.
By consultation of the relevant target groups, the evaluation was to provide the parties responsible for the project with information on the quick check as an instrument and procedure. The results of evaluation are to be used to improve and optimize the procedures for the identification of mental stress.

Results:

To sum up, is to be found out that the procedure was valued generally positively, however, there is still improvement need at some places. Positively is to be valued that the ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia stands together with the public scholl accident insurer for North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the company-medical and security-technical service to the resident schools by the integration of the psychic charges in the danger judgement in an advisory capacity aside.

The results of the evaluation make clear that a certain discontent with the suggested procedure exists. Indeed, it must be put away that such a procedure needs first a certain time, until it matures to an experienced expiry in the everyday life at school. It is important also that with the inquiry of psychic charges at schools any more working charges do not originate for the partners, but the use clearly predominates. Also here the results showed that this is not evident currently for the interviewees yet. The amount of work involved with approximately one week is not measured, the use for the schools, however, yet recognizably. A renewed Evaluation in a few years would be possible to check whether the procedure is differently valued when, for example, measures were derived and were moved successfully. For the other action a reworking of the procedure on basis of these results is planned.

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