Ivana Igic

Does work stress make you shorter? An ambulatory field study of daily work stressors, job control, and spinal shrinkage.

Body height decreases throughout the day due to fluid loss from the intervertebral disk. This study investigated whether spinal shrinkage was greater during workdays compared with nonwork days, whether daily work stressors were positively related to spinal shrinkage, and whether job control was negatively related to spinal shrinkage. In a consecutive 2-week ambulatory field study, including 39 office employees and 512 days of observation, spinal shrinkage was measured by a stadiometer, and calculated as body height in the morning minus body height in the evening. Physical activity was monitored throughout the 14 days by accelerometry. Daily work stressors, daily job control, biomechanical workload, and recreational activities after work were measured with daily surveys. Multilevel regression analyses showed that spinal disks shrank more during workdays than during nonwork days. After adjustment for sex, age, body weight, smoking status, biomechanical work strain, and time spent on physical and low-effort activities during the day, lower levels of daily job control significantly predicted increased spinal shrinkage. Findings add to knowledge on how work redesign that increases job control may possibly contribute to preserving intervertebral disk function and preventing occupational back pain.

Gesellschaftliche Bedeutung und Kosten von Stress

Hohe Anforderungen, Hindernisse bei der Zielerreichung sowie mangelnde Gestaltungsmoglichkeiten sind heute kennzeichnend fur den Arbeitsalltag vieler Erwerbstatiger. Dieses Kapitel gibt hierzu einen Uberblick und zeigt den Zusammenhang solcher Arbeitsbedingungen mit wichtigen Gesundheitsindikatoren und daraus resultierenden Produktivitatsverlusten auf. Den Kosten des Stresses wird eine Nutzenkalkulation von stressreduzierenden Interventionen gegenubergestellt. Das Kapitel gibt einen Einblick in erfolgreiche Interventionsmoglichkeiten und schliest mit einem Ausblick auf stressrelevante Herausforderungen einer sich schnell wandelnden Arbeitswelt.

Testing Job Typologies and Identifying At-Risk Subpopulations Using Factor Mixture Models.

Research in occupational health psychology has tended to focus on the effects of single job characteristics or various job characteristics combined into 1 factor. However, such a variable-centered approach does not account for the clustering of job attributes among groups of employees. We addressed this issue by using a person-centered approach to (a) investigate the occurrence of different empirical constellations of perceived job stressors and resources and (b) validate the meaningfulness of profiles by analyzing their association with employee well-being and performance. We applied factor mixture modeling to identify profiles in 4 large samples consisting of employees in Switzerland (Studies 1 and 2) and the United States (Studies 3 and 4). We identified 2 profiles that spanned the 4 samples, with 1 reflecting a combination of relatively low stressors and high resources (P1) and the other relatively high stressors and low resources (P3). The profiles differed mainly in terms of their organizational and social aspects. Employees in P1 reported significantly higher mean levels of job satisfaction, performance, and general health, and lower means in exhaustion compared with P3. Additional analyses showed differential relationships between job attributes and outcomes depending on profile membership. These findings may benefit organizational interventions as they show that perceived work stressors and resources more strongly influence satisfaction and well-being in particular profiles.

Ten-year trajectories of stressors and resources at work: Cumulative and chronic effects on health and well-being

Employing 5 waves of measurement over a period of 10 years, we explored the effects of exposure to constellations of conditions at work on physical and psychological strain, estimating the history of exposure over time. Specifically, we first tested if the 4 constellations postulated by the job demand–control (JDC) model, extended to include social stressors, could be identified empirically over time through a person-centered analysis. Second, we tested 2 specific effects of the history of exposure on physical and psychological strain: cumulative effects (i.e., history of exposure predicting strain) and chronic effects (i.e., history of exposure being associated with reduced reversibility in strain). Data were collected from 483 respondents who were at the end of their vocational training. The results supported the hypotheses, in that not all JDC constellations could be empirically identified, the majority of participants was in rather favorable constellations, and the differences between constellations, in terms of levels of demands and control, were more subtle than suggested by theoretically predefined constellations. Because the linear and quadratic solutions were largely comparable, we decided to adopt the linear ones. The expected cumulative and chronic effects were mostly confirmed: Unfavorable JDC constellations were associated with poorer health and well-being than favorable ones, when controlling for the initial level of the respective outcome variable, demographic variables, and for cumulative private stressors (cumulative effects). These differences largely remained after further adjustments for current conditions at work (chronic effects).

Work-privacy conflict and musculoskeletal pain: a population-based test of a stress-sleep-mediation model

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that work–privacy conflict (WPC) is associated with musculoskeletal pain (MSP), but the processes involved are unclear. This study simultaneously tested strain and sleep problems as mediators in three mediation paths (WPC →strain→MSP; WPC →sleep problems→MSP; and WPC →strain→sleep problems→MSP). Total mediation (including all three mediation paths) was expected to be stronger in older compared to younger participants, in participants doing shift work compared to those with regular work time, and in women compared to men. In a representative sample of the Swiss working population (N = 3438), WPC, strain, sleep problems, and MSP were assessed by self-report. A set of linear regressions and bootstrapping were used to test the indirect path coefficients. All three mediation paths were significant (ps < .001). The total indirect effect was stronger in women compared to men (p = .036) but mediation did not differ based on working schedules or age. However, tests of higher order moderated mediation showed that mediation was significantly higher in women aged 45 or older who did shift work than in all other combinations (p = .036). A process model postulating strain and sleep problems to mediate the association between WPC and MSP was empirically supported. Work redesign should reduce WPC in order to reduce strain, prevent sleeping problems, and reduce work-related MSP.