A quasi experimental study to assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on stress and coping strategies regarding care of children among working women of Tarn Taran

Stress is a complex, dynamic process of interaction between a person and his or her environment. It is an unpleasant psychological and physiological state caused due to some internal or external demands that go beyond our capacity. Coping is the cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external and internal demands appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the individual. Most of the working mothers have school going children 4–15 years of age. This will make more stresses in mothers, because they have to meet their children's need and family also. This will increase their emotional stress. These increasing stresses will cause so many physical and mental problems.

Objective of the study to assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on stress and coping strategies regarding care of children among working women of area of Tarn Taran.

A quasi experimental-non randomized control group research design was used, their research approach was quasi experimental and evaluative in nature. The sample size was 60 working women in selected areas of district Tarn Taran which were kept 30 under experimental group and 30 under control group. The instruments used for the data collection were demographic questionnaire, Standardized parental stress scale, and 5-point Likert coping strategies scale. The non probability purposive sampling technique was adopted to select the subjects.

Result showed that the that mean scores of pre test and post test of stress among experimental group of working women regarding care of children were 62.46, (SD±5.79) R=26, and 61.20, (SD±5.60) R=24 respectively. And in control group were 60.67, (SD±7.95) R=29 and 50.53, (SD±14.95) R=41 respectively. The mean score of pre test and post test of coping strategies among experimental group of working women regarding care of children were 33.67, (SD±3.44) R=14, and 42.83 (SD±13.70), R=44 respectively, and in control group were 34.63, (SD±5.84) R=19, and 56 (SD±12.02), R=41 respectively. The paired ‘t-test’ value of pre test and post test was 26.83, 2.93 respectively and correlation value of pre test and post test were (0.52), (0.60) in experimental group is significant at the level of P≤0.01.

The study suggested that the teaching will improve the coping measures like problem solving skills, relaxation techniques etc, that will help in reduction of stress among working women.