A Comparative Study of Coping Mechanisms and Job Burnout among Iranian and Indian High School Teachers

The relationship between coping mechanism variables and job burnout variables was examined among the high school teachers from iran and india, to find out the differences in coping mechanisms and job burnout of the iranian and indian teachers, and to study the role of coping mechanisms in job burnout among these teachers. the instruments used to measure the variables were: 1) the ways of coping questionnaire by lazarus and folkman (1984) and 2) maslach burnout inventory by maslach and jackson (1981). the data were collected from 300 teachers from iran and 300 teachers from india. 137 female teachers and 163 male teachers were teaching in high schools in tehran (iran), and 160 female teachers and 140 male teachers were teaching in high schools in pune (india). the statistical techniques of descriptive statistics, and two-way anova statistics were employed to analyze the data. the results indicated that: (1) iranian teachers, compared to the indian teachers, were higher in the use of problem-focused coping mechanism (p < .01). but, there were no significant differences between iranian and indian teachers in the use of emotion-focused coping mechanism; (2) there were no significant differences between iranian and indian teachers on job burnout in the areas of emotional exhaustion and loss of personal accomplishment. however, indian teachers, compared to the iranian teachers, were higher on job burnout in the area of depersonalization (p < .01)