Unveiling emotional strain: The interplay of loneliness, stress, and depression among school leaders
Gülnar Özyildirim & Michaela Gläser-Zikuda
What the paper says
This embedded mixed-methods study contributes to the emerging leadership literature by examining how school leaders’ emotions interact and influence one another. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model, we explored the interplay among different emotional strains experienced by school leaders in Antalya, Türkiye (N = 342). We proposed that both emotional job demands (e.g., workplace loneliness) and strain (e.g., work-related stress) are key antecedents of a health impairment outcome (e.g., workplace depression). Additionally, we hypothesized that workplace loneliness would be associated with work-related stress. The findings from our structural equation model provide significant empirical support for JD-R processes in the context of school leadership, and interviews with school administrators corroborated our quantitative results. This study reinforces the JD-R model by demonstrating that emotional job demand can trigger other work-related strains and mental health impairment, which may eventually affect broader organizational well-being.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.