Doctomous Stoudy

he study was conducted in a computer, software and network company that employs $40 000 employees. In July 2004, the central Health Care Department invited all employees to voluntarily answer the web-based Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ), a questionnaire devel- oped and validated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan [14]. This invitation was posted on the internal company's website and invited participants to visit the company's Health Care Department website to answer the questionnaire. The responses were then sent to the Health Care Department. Only authorized staff of the department had access to the data. The entire process was web-based with manual data entry. Since this study was compiled from a survey conducted as a mental health promotion activity in the company and was administered by the medical personal staff, no institutional review board approval was solicited. However, before conduct- ing the survey, the design and the conduct of the survey were the object of an agreement between the employers and the employees union. The study protected the partic- ipants' privacy and participation to the survey was entirely voluntary.

The BJSQ consists of 57 items that cover stress re- sponse, job stressors and social supports. Gender, age of the participant, number of hours slept and the number of overtime hours worked in the most recent month were also collected. Sleeping time and overtime hours were self-assessed by each participant. Overtime hours per month was defined by calculating total hours worked mi- nus the standard eight working hours per day in weekdays plus number of hours worked on holidays during the month. The participants reported their overtime work in- to one of 10-h categories of overtime work.

Upon completion of the questionnaire, the partici- pants obtained their own personal profile of stress re- sponse, job stressors and social supports. In addition, the system gave them some recommendations on how to manage their stress. The BJSQ assesses the following stress responses: lack of vigor, anger, fatigue, depressive symptom, anxiety and physical distress. Each stress re- sponse was rated from 1 5 low distress to 5 5 high dis- tress. The stress response for each factor was added to yield a total stress response score that ranged from 6 to 30.

In order to contrast different levels of stress in the anal- ysis, the response scores were dichotomized at the median and at the 90th percentile value.

Job stressors in the BJSQ include the following varia- bles: self-assessed amount of work, mental workload, physical workload, job control, skill utilization, interper- sonal conflict, poor physical environment, job suitability and work satisfaction. Social supports include supervisor support, coworker support and family/friend support. The following three statements in the BJSQ were used to generate the score 'amount of work': (i) 'I always have a great