The Moderating Effect of Humor Sensation
on the Relation Between Childcare Teacher’s Job Stress and Happiness
Yu-Shin Lee

Early Childhood Education Major
Graduate School of Education
Pukyong National University

ABSTRACT

This study examined the effects of job stress and sense of humor on the happiness of childcare teachers. To this end, at the differences in happiness according to the general background of the childcare teacher, and then examined the relationship between the job stress of the childcare teacher and the sense of humor and happiness.
This subjects of the this study were 294 childcare teachers working in Busan and Gyeongnam provinces. To measure the happiness of the childcare teacher, the questionnaire of Kang Woo-jung (2015), which revised and revised the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, The test scale of job stress used the job stress scale that by Cho Kyu-young (2011) revised the questionnaire of Clark(1980) Teacher Occupational Stress Factor Questionnair(TOSFQ) and the questionnaire of D`Arienzo(1981) Teacher Occupational Stress Factor Questionnai(MTOSFQ).
And to measure thesense of sense of humor the day care center teacher, this study used a multifaceted sense of humor scale developed by Thorson and Powell (1993), a self-reported test tool used in Lee Jae-sun''s study, a humor sense scale. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS 21.0 program through methods of one-way ANOVA, product-moment correlation coefficient, and hierarchical regression analysis depending on the research problem.
The important results of this study are as follows:
First, differences in the general background of childcare teachers were found.
Second, the job stress was a negative correlation with the teacher ''s happiness, and the sense of humor showed a static correlation. The higher the job stress of the childcare teacher, the lower the happiness, and the lower the job stress, the higher the happiness of the childcare teacher. On the other hand, the higher the level of humor of the childcare teacher, the higher the happiness of the childcare teacher. On the other hand, the higher the sense of humor of the childcare teacher, the less the job stress was felt.
Third, the sense of humor has an intervention effect on the negative effect of the job stress of the childcare teacher on the happiness. The negative effect of the job stress felt by the childcare teacher on the happiness of the childcare teacher was eased by the level of the childcare teacher''s sense of humor.
Based on the results, we discussed the necessity of practical measures to improve the sense of humor as well as the institutional measures to lower their job stress in order to promote the happiness of the childcare teachers in the early childhood education field.