INFLUENCE OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS ON ACADEMIC STAFF PRODUCTIVITY IN PUBLIC TERTIARY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

People who work in helping professions that involve interacting with people—especially teachers could be 
more vulnerable to mental discomfort due to stress. Thus, this study examined the influence of occupational 
stress on academic staff productivity in public tertiary educational institutions in Lagos State. Two 
hypotheses (tested at 0.05 level of significance) in which correlational and descriptive research designs were 
adopted, its population comprised all academic staff in public tertiary educational institutions in Lagos State. 
The sample size was 700. Questionnaire was used to collect data after ensuring its validity and establishing 
their reliability using test-retest method. This is the ‗Occupational Stress Questionnaire for Teachers (OSQT) 
(r = 0.94). In addition, Records observation was used to obtain examination results from the tertiary 
educational institutions sampled. Analysis was carried out using inferential statistics of t-test and 
Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) through the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 
version 24.0. Findings indicate that there is a significant difference in occupational stress among academic 
staff productivity in public tertiary educational institutions in Lagos State, Nigeria between cadres –
professorial and non-professorial (and their equivalents) [t(df = 641) = 0.120; ρ= 0.904 > 0.05]. In the same 
vein, the study found that there is no significant difference in occupational stress and productivity of 
academic staff of public tertiary institutions in Lagos State, Nigeria among Universities, Polytechnics and 
Colleges of education (F4, 112) = 0.694, p< 0.05). It is concluded that occupational stress has a 
considerable influence on the lecturers‘ productivity in tertiary educational institutions in Lagos State. The 
study therefore recommended that Management of tertiary educational institutions should increase staff 
numbers and improve facilities and resources as this is the most effective way to address the high workload 
problem. While as well upgrading teaching facilities, providing greater funding for research, increasing 
professional development opportunities for lecturers