The contributors to chronic stress in the workplace have been well established in existing research. How everyday stressors translate to long-term risk factors for chronic stress remains an open question, however. In our literature review, we tackled the question of which everyday workplace experiences cause stress as their immediate consequence. We were interested in what is termed as acute, periodic, episodic, or everyday stress, that is, non-chronic types of stress. To capture day-to-day variations in these experiences, we included only studies that assessed stress repeatedly or monitored it continuously, such as by using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). A search strategy was devised and applied in the following databases: CINAHL, Embase, ERIC, PsycARTICLES, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. We deduplicated records in EndNote, assessed the titles and abstracts against eligibility criteria by using Rayyan and selected a minority of them for full-text screening. A subset of papers was included in the final review and evaluated for quality using the QualSyst tool at study level and using the GRADE approach at body of evidence level. The systematic review has been registered on PROSPERO (Registration Number: CRD42018105355). We will compile a list of (non-chronic) stressors, i.e. daily experiences that elicited stress in the workplace. In case they are reported systematically enough throughout the literature, they will be rated in terms of their importance. Finally, subgroup comparisons will be carried out from the point of view of occupational classification.
COBISS.SI-ID: 13631235
Chronic workplace stress and its health-related consequences like mental and cardiovascular diseases have been widely investigated. This project focuses on the sources and context of psychosocial daily workplace stress in a real-world setting. The main objective is to analyze and model real-time relationships between (1) psychosocial stress experiences within the natural work environment, (2) micro-level work activities and events, and (3) physiological signals and behaviors in office workers. An Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) protocol has been developed, partly building on machine learning techniques. Empatica® wristbands will be used for real-life detection of stress from physiological signals; micro-level activities and events at work will be based on smartphone registrations, further processed according to an automated computer algorithm. A field study including 100 office-based workers with high-level problem-solving tasks like managers and researchers will be implemented in Slovenia and Belgium (50 in each country). Data mining and state-of-the-art statistical methods – mainly multilevel statistical modelling for repeated data – will be used. The project findings will provide novel contributions to the field of occupational health research. While traditional assessments inform us about global perceived state of chronic stress exposure, the EMA approach is expected to bring new insights about daily fluctuating work stress experiences, especially micro-level events and activities at work that induce acute physiological stress responses. The project is therefore likely to generate further evidence on relevant stressors in a real-time working environment and hence make it possible to advise on workplace procedures/policies for reducing stress.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32794151