A Study on the Types of Job Stress and Turnover Intention of Social Workers: Focusing on Latent Profile Analysis

This study aims to verify the influence of the types of social workers' job stress on their intention to change jobs. To this end, the data from the Social Worker Panel Survey (2022) of the Korean Social Workers Association were used. The study subjects were 4,633 people, including 4,021 general social workers and 612 social workers in the medical, mental health, and school fields. As a result of the analysis, First, as a result of the latent profile analysis of social workers' job stress, three types (low-level job stress group, medium-level job stress group, and high-level job stress group) were finally selected. Second, the more social workers had supervision experience, the more positive the degree of compensation adequacy was, and the more positive the workplace atmosphere was regarding work-life balance, the more likely they were to belong to the low-level job stress group (comparison group: medium, high-level job stress group). Third, the younger the social worker, the more often he or she does not have an actor, the more often he or she is not a full-time employee, the more negative the level of compensation adequacy, the more negative the workplace atmosphere is regarding work-life balance, and the more often he or she is a general social worker (comparative group: medical, mental health, and school social workers), the higher the intention to quit. Fourth, The more one belongs to a job stress group, the lower the turnover intention becomes. Conversely, the more one belongs to a high level job stress group, the higher the turnover intention appears. The significance of this study is to classify the types of job stress of social workers, analyze the influence of social workers' sociodemographic and job characteristics on the types of job stress, and verify the influence of job stress types, including these, on turnover intention.