Fighting fires may sound taxing, chasing criminals demanding, but a new study says that working in library is the most stressful job of all. The BBC Says Librarians are the most unhappy with their workplace, often finding their job repetitive and unchallenging, according to psychologist Saqib Saddiq.
He will tell the British Psychological Society that one in three workers suffer from poor psychological health.
The study surveyed nearly 300 people drawn from five occupations.
They were firefighters, police officers, train operators, teachers and librarians and were intended to cover the spectrum, with the librarians first-thought to be the least stressful occupation.
Did you read the job description? … “
“Librarians complained about their physical environment, saying they were sick of being stuck between book shelves all day
??????
Dr. Fleemer resigned as chief of medicine stating “I was just so DONE with sick people.”
only 300 people?
Since when is 0.0000004% of a population a good sample size?
Re:only 300 people?
n(sub0) = Z^2pq/e2
For example in a very large population of which we do not know the variability of job stress as self reported, we assume p=.5 maximum variability (binary). We want a 95% confidence level, and plus or minus 5% precision. Thus…
Z^2 is the abscissa of the normal curve (bell curve) that cuts off the area at the tails (1.96)
We have (1.96)^2(.5)(.5)/ (.05)^2 = 385 (feel free to do the math yourself… OK 384.16) so in a very large population a sample of 385 is a valid sample size. The authors of the study may have accepted a lower confidence level or different precision.
If you have a finite population size the equation is even easier N=N/1+N(e)^2 ,where N is the population and e is the level of precision.
Pay attention in school and you too will avoid posting silly questions that others find Insightful. (of course few librarians will find this insightful because they never took a good statistics class, or higher maths. I did. I guess that is why I was so dissatisfied with public librarianship.
N.B. The built in calculator in Windows (click on start, run, type calc, hit enter.) also does scientific calculations. Click on view and choose scientific. It is really quite useful.
Ridiculous
I left a good paying position with a much hated law enforcement entity to be a librarian. Before that I worked with mentally ill people; my mistakes in that setting might have resulted in loss of life.
My work life still contains stressors, but NOTHING like before.
Re:Ridiculous
Me too. I worked with litigators for many years–this is a piece of cake emotionally. But my thoughts could change in the future. Maybe this is reflective of where those librarians work, they type of library, type of patronage, etc.
not exactly news…
Last Updated: Thursday, 12 January 2006.
This is old. . . In fact, it’s a repost.