Cyberbullying among youth in Malaysia

The purpose of this research was to survey the current situation concerning cyberbullying among youth in Malaysia. Specifically, this research aimed at finding out the prevalence of cyberbullying among youth based on demographic data and the common types of cyberbullying tactic. The survey method was adopted as the research design in which a set of questionnaire was developed to collect the data. A total of 1406 respondents were selected in this research. In general, the research findings reveal that majority of the respondents had been cyberbullied before. The Malays community yielded the highest percentage of cyberbullied victims. In addition, the result also shows that female cyber users were usually targeted as the cyberbully victim. The most common type of cyberbully tactic was through receiving offensive/ pornographic materials. Effective and pragmatic steps have to be taken in order to mitigate the cyberbullying problem among Malaysian youth

A study of organizational factors in occupational stress problems among workers in a polymer manufacturing factory

Occupational stress is a major hazard for many workers. Increasing workloads, downsizing, overtime and shift work are just a few the many causes of stressful working condition. Moreover unhealthy work organization will not only affect the work performance but will affect the worker's health as well. With this in mind, a study was conducted to determine the prevalence of occupational stress and to identify the association between the organizational factors with stress level among factory workers. Through a cross sectional study, 91 manufacturing workers were randomly sampled and data was collected using a questionnaire, namely the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ). The validated self-administered Malay version of JCQ was used to verify the socio-demographic background, the stress level of the respondents and the factors contributed to work stress which is organizational factors. JCQ contains four factors which were the psychological demand (job demand), decision latitude (job control), social support and job insecurity. Overall the prevalence of occupational stress among the respondent was 25.3%. The result showed that there were significant associations between occupational stress and decision latitude (p<;0.001); psychological job demand (p<;0.001); and job insecurity (p=0.027). However, there was no significant association between occupational stress level and social support (p=0.433). This study showed that three out of four organizational factors had significant associations to occupational stress indicating unhealthy work organization. In addition as the prevalence is considered low, work stressors can be detected at an early stage. Therefore, preventive measure or intervention needs to implement accordingly to alleviate the negative consequences since the occupational stress can be considered as a major hazard for the workers

Association between psychosocial safety climate and job demand resources towards burnout among community college staff in Peninsular Malaysia

Psychological hazards are one of the relevant areas in occupational health with many studies done on occupational stress. However, the extreme end of mental health which is burnout that has a more serious impact has not been much explored. Previous study has shown that 10 to 15% of the working population in the Netherlands suffer from the burnout that has a more detrimental effect compared to occupational stress. Therefore in this study, it was proposed that Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) act as a precursor to working conditions and its effects on employees’ psychological well-being. Furthermore, PSC will decrease emotional exhaustion, particularly through job demands (bullying and emotional demands), and job resources (i.e social support). A cross-sectional survey was conducted and respondents were sampled through multistage sampling were based on the number of community colleges in Peninsular Malaysia, approximately 50 colleges were first randomly chosen and later staff from each selected colleges were further sampled through simple random sampling. Finally, a total of 425 employees from 45 organizations agreed to participate in the study. For statistical analysis, Hierarchical Linear Modeling software was used as it is able to test a multilevel relationship. It was found that PSC was negatively associated with workplace bullying (γ = -.13, SE = .03, P<.001) and emotional demands (γ = -.17, SE = .05, P<.01) and positively associated with social support (γ = .16, SE = .02, P<.001). In addition, the relationship between PSC with burnout was mediated by workplace bullying (ƶ=- 3.61, SE=.01, p<.001), emotional demands (ƶ=-3.18, SE=.01, p<.001) and social support (ƶ=-6.86, SE=.01, p<.001). In conclusion, these finding on PSC would provide community colleges staff a better guidance and understanding about the concepts of PSC to improve the psychological health especially with regards to burnout