Work Presure and Stress

Abstract

Work-related stress occurs when people may be presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenges their ability to cope. According to Hans Selye, acknowledge internationally as the "father of stress research" (1936), defined stress as "the nonspecific response of the body to any demand placed upon it". Researchers continue to struggle today in an effort to agree on exactly what is stress and how it can be measured (AIS, 1979). Stress is a word that comes from the Latin word stringere meaning to draw tight, Cannon (1929) defined stress in terms of the internal physiological state of subjects exposed to threatening or exciting situations, e.g. the raised adrenaline secretion that can be observed in the well-known 'fight or flight' reaction (Arnorld and Randall et al., 2010)

For several decades, occupational health researchers have been concerned with factors at work that may cause stress (Innstrand et al., 2012). Work-related stress and work pressure draw attention of many researchers due to the increase in illness and health issues derived from work. Moreover, an interest in examination of the differences in psychological symptoms and the variation in the reaction relative to the gender was demonstrated. Depression, anxiety, panic, loss of confidence, change in emotional reaction and more are known as psychological driving factors of work-related stress. In order to analyse the dimension and the impact of work pressure on stress, the first hypothesis of this research established as: " Stress is mainly due to work pressure", and in addition, to have a better understanding if there is difference in the symptoms of stress expressed by male and female, the second hypothesis was articulated as: "There is a difference in stress symptoms between males and females". The research was based on self-report questionnaires handed out to different types of organizations. Previous researches reinforce the results of this study. Indeed, the hypothesis were proved and strengthened by the research done in this questionnaire. There are evidences of a positive relationship between stress and work pressure and the findings show a significant difference in the symptoms expressed by males and females. Implications of the findings are discussed in the paper.

Hypothesis 1

Stress is mainly due to work pressure

Hypothesis 2

There is a difference in stress symptoms between males and females.

Introduction

Prior studies reported that the UK's largest private sector union, Britain's work places are becoming more stressful (AMICUS, 2002). A Health and Safety Committee report found that between 2001 and 2002, 32.9 million working days had been lost due to work-related illnesses (King, 2005), in addition Karasek and Theorell (1990) reported that employees in high-strain jobs were at a particularly increased risk of various health problems. Physiological measures are problematic, since a number of factors may influence health other than work-related stress. Therefore this paper focused on analysing this subject, by simply measuring work-related stress by asking people directly about how they feel about their jobs or specifically the different psychological symptoms related to work-related stress. The objective is to prove that work pressure is a driving element of stress and to compare the differ¬ences between male and female con¬cerning the symptoms of work-related stress.

Methodology

Resources that supported this research was journals, books, articles and exploratory studies between 1990-2010. Aiming to clarify the same subject of this paper, thus this report wishes to add value to this specific study through a questionnaire and literature review.

Sample

Primary research - a 38-question questionnaire handed out to 40 participants (20 males and 20 females) randomly selected from different work industries and different work shifts. 27.5% of workers were part-timers; 5% Independent workers; 2.5% subcontractors; 65% full time workers. The participants were between 18 and 40 years old.

Data collection

The questionnaire organized by 3 sections, in the first section the purpose was to investigate the situational aspects of the life of participants; the second section leaned on issues related to the work life of the participants and finally the last section the objective was to find out the health problems of the participants before and after the current occupation.

Data analysis

When measuring and analysing the data of the first hypothesis in order to produce graphical representation of the results as well as a T-test to prove that "Stress is mainly due to work pressure" the questions from the self-report that were examined was: question 35, are you affected by stress; question 36, do you think that stress is related to work pressure; question 37, which are the reasons of the work pressure; and finally question 38, participants were asked to provide some symptoms of stress. Firstly analysing questions 35, 36 and 37; participants could only opt between yes/no. On the other hand, question 38 had 5 more options of answer. The graphical representation for the results was Pie as shows in figure 1. Regarding questions 35 and 36 the strength of an agreement between variables could not be represented graphically due to the design of questionnaire, in other words, there was evidences of a strong relationship between stress and work pressure, however the method of the responses could not be put into a graphical representation (scatter diagram). In the case of the second hypothesis "There is a difference in stress symptoms between males and females" it was measured by looking at questions 35 and 38, which aimed to find out the causes of the work-related stress and the participants were asked to provide symptoms that are visible and palpable, in order to compare these symptoms between male and female as showed in the graphical representation in figure 1.2.

Findings

The results regarding the first hypothesis were partially supported by the pri¬mary research. 22 out of 40 participants affirmed to be stressed and 81% out of these 22 participants affirmed that their stress is due to work pressure or work load. Participants were also