Factor Analysis of Forest Guards' Job Stress: Case Study of Golestan Province

Part of the forest protection mission is carried out by a special unit in the Natural Resources Offices, which is currently operating under the supervision of the IRI's police. The present study was conducted using the descriptive-survey method. The study population consisted of 220 forest guard officers in Golestan province, which 132 of them were studied by stratified random sampling method. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by face validity and referring to university professors and experts from the Natural Resources Department and officers of the Protection Unit of Golestan province. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS16 software through factor analysis. The results showed that the occupational stress of the forest guard officers is more than a moderate level. The occupational stress of the forest guard officers comes from 11 factors, among which "organizational challenges," "work hazards" and "laws and relationships," with an explained variance of 15.96, 6.38 and 6.17 respectively, have the most critical role occupational stress. Given the relatively high level of job stress of forest conservation officers, serious action needs to be taken to reduce it. Ensuring the suitability of individual characteristics with forest conservation jobs, upgrading conservation officers' knowledge of laws and procedures to resolve conflicts with local communities, paying adequate and timely salaries, providing the necessary equipment, reduce the extent of the area under the protection and training of individual strategies for coping with stress is the suggestions of the present study to reduce job stress.