What is Job stress? what are the different topics that comes under the study of !

What is Job stress? what are the different topics that comes under the study of job stress?

apparently a very big dealread on:
..."Numerous surveys and studies confirm that occupational pressures and fears are far and away the leading source of stress for American adults and that these have steadily increased over the past few decades. While there are tons of statistics to support these allegations, how significant they are depends on such things as how the information was obtained (self-report vs. answers to carefully worded questions), the size and demographics of the targeted group, how participants were selected and who sponsored the study. Some self-serving polls claiming that a particular occupation is "the most stressful" are conducted by unions or organizations in a attempt to get higher wages or better benefits for their members. Others may be conducted to promote a product, such as the "Stress In the Nineties" survey by the maker of a deodorant that found housewives were under more stress than the CEO's of major corporations. Such a conclusion might be anticipated from telephone calls to residential phones conducted in the afternoon. It is crucial to keep all these caveats in mind when evaluating job stress statistics.


The NIOSH report on the right is an excellent resource that cites the following:

40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful;
25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives;
Three fourths of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago;
29% of workers felt quite a bit or extremely stressed at work;
26 percent of workers said they were "often or very often burned out or stressed by their work";
Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems...." etc



This information was obtained in the 1990's in large surveys by Northwestern National Life Insurance Co, Princeton Survey Research Associates, St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., Yale University and The Families and Work Institute.

More recently, the 2000 annual "Attitudes In The American WorkplaceVI" Gallup Poll sponsored by the Marlin Company found that:

80% of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress and 42% say their coworkers need such help;
14% of respondents had felt like striking a coworker in the past year, but didn't;
25% have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress, 10% are concerned about an individual at work they fear could become violent;
9% are aware of an assault or violent act in their workplace and 18% had experienced some sort of threat or verbal intimidation in the past year.
To read the 2001 "Attitudes in the American Workplace VII" report and take a quick "Workplace Stress" quiz created by the Marlin Company and The American Institute of Stress

A subsequent 2000 Integra Survey similarly reported that:

65% of workers said that workplace stress had caused difficulties and more than 10 percent described these as having major effects;
10% said they work in an atmosphere where physical violence has occurred because of job stress and in this group, 42% report that yelling and other verbal abuse is common;
29% had yelled at co-workers because of workplace stress, 14% said they work where machinery or equipment has been damaged because of workplace rage and 2% admitted that they had actually personally struck someone;
19% or almost one in five respondents had quit a previous position because of job stress and nearly one in four have been driven to tears because of workplace stress;
62% routinely find that they end the day with work-related neck pain, 44% reported stressed-out eyes, 38% complained of hurting hands and 34% reported difficulty in sleeping because they were too stressed-out;
12% had called in sick because of job stress;
Over half said they often spend 12-hour days on work related duties and an equal number frequently skip lunch because of the stress of job demands.
These findings are supported by other studies that put their significance in perspective.

Violence has become an increasingly serious problem

According to two studies the United States has the dubious distinction of having the highest violent crime rate of any industrialized nation. An average of 20 workers are murdered each week in the U. S. making homicide the second highest cause of workplace deaths and the leading one for females. 18,000 non-fatal violent crimes such as sexual and other assaults also occur each week while the victim is working, or about a million a year. The figures are probably higher since many are not reported. Certain dangerous occupations like police officers and cab drivers understandably have higher rates of homicide and non-fatal assaults. Nevertheless, postal workers who work in a safe environment have experienced so many fatalities due to job stress that "going postal" has crept into our language. "Desk rage" and "phone rage" have also become increasingly common terms.