Consistency of implications of three role stressors across four countries

Abstract

Relationships between role stressors (ambiguity, overload, and conflict), anxiety, commitment (affective and continuance), and turnover intention were examined. These variables were measured via a survey of 1396 nurses in a total of 15 hospitals in Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Three role stressors were expected to predict anxiety and indirectly predict intention to leave. Anxiety was expected to predict affective and continuance commitment, and anxiety, affective commitment, and continuance commitment were expected to predict intention to leave the hospital. Although mean score differences were expected across countries, direction of the relationships between variables were expected to be the same, which would indicate consistency regarding the implications of three role stressors across countries. AMOS's structural equations modeling program was used to test a multi-group manifest variable path analysis. Results yielded support for the proposed relationships (NFI = 0.93; TLI = 0.89). It was tentatively concluded that stress is a culture-general process. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.