I review existing knowledge, unanswered questions, and new directions in research on stress, coping resource, coping strategies, and social support processes. New directions in research on stressors include examining the differing impacts of stress across a range of physical and mental health outcomes, the "carry-overs" of stress from one role domain or stage of life into another, the benefits derived from negative experiences, and the determinants of the meaning of stressors. Although a sense of personal control and perceived social support influence health and mental health both directly and as stress buffers, the theoretical mechanisms through which they do so still require elaboration and testing. New work suggests that coping flexibility and structural constraints on individuals' coping efforts may be important to pursue. Promising new directions in social support research include studies of the negative effects of social relationships and of support giving, mutual coping and support-giving dynamics, optimal "matches" between individuals' needs and support received, and properties of groups which can provide a sense of social support. Qualitative comparative analysis, optimal matching analysis, and event-structure analysis are new techniques which may help advance research in these broad topic areas. To enhance the effectiveness of coping and social support interventions, intervening mechanisms need to be better understood. Nevertheless, the policy implications of stress research are clear and are important given current interest in health care reform in the United States.

/pdf/stress-coping-and-social-support-processes-where-are-we-what-5e1hij3maf.pdf

Stress, coping, and social support processes: where are we? What next?

A comprehensive model of the work-family interface was developed and tested. The proposed model extended prior research by explicitly distinguishing between work interfering with family and family interfering with work. This distinction allowed testing of hypotheses concerning the unique antecedents and outcomes of both forms of work-family conflict and a reciprocal relationship between them. The influence of gender, race, and job type on the generalizability of the model was also examined. Data were obtained through household interviews with a random sample of 631 individuals. The model was tested with structural equation modeling techniques. Results were strongly supportive. In addition, although the model was invariant across gender and race, there were differences across blue- and white-collar workers. Implications for future research on the work-family interface are discussed.

Antecedents and outcomes of work-family conflict: testing a model of the work-family interface.

This cross-sectional study investigates the relationship between the psychosocial work environment and cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevalence in a randomly selected, representative sample of 13,779 Swedish male and female workers. It was found that self-reported psychological job demands, work control, and co-worker social support combined greater then multiplicatively in relation to CVD prevalence. An age-adjusted prevalence ratio (PR) of 2.17 (95% CI-1.32, 3.56) was observed among workers with high demands, low control, and low social support compared to a low demand, high control, and high social support reference group. PRs of approximately 2.00 were observed in this group after consecutively controlling for the effects of age together with 11 other potential confounding factors. The magnitude of the age-adjusted PRs was greatest for blue collar males. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the study design, causal inferences cannot be made. The limitations of design and measurement are discussed in th...

Job strain, work place social support, and cardiovascular disease: a cross-sectional study of a random sample of the Swedish working population.

This chapter differentiates the stressful consequences of social organization from the stressful antecedents of psychological disorder. The pivotal distinction concerns whether the occurrence of stressors is viewed as socially determined, or as independent of social placement. Recent research is evaluated concerning both the social distribution of stress and social variation in response to stress. Two particularly productive areas of inquiry are also reviewed: self-efficacy as a mediator between social position and stress; and the intersection of macro- and micro-stress processes in economic and occupational spheres, with emphasis upon gender stratification. This review concludes that the occurrence of systemic stressors is not necessarily an indication of a social system run amok but may reflect instead the system functioning precisely as it is supposed to function.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2083444.pdf

Social Stress: Theory and Research

A new measure of QWL was developed based on need satisfaction and spillover theories The measure was designed to capture the extent to which the work environment, job requirements, supervisory behavior, and ancillary programs in an organization are perceived to meet the needs of an employee We identified seven major needs, each having several dimensions These are: (a) health and safety needs (protection from ill health and injury at work and outside of work, and enhancement of good health), (b) economic and family needs (pay, job security, and other family needs), (c) social needs (collegiality at work and leisure time off work), (d) esteem needs (recognition and appreciation of work within the organization and outside the organization), (e) actualization needs (realization of one's potential within the organization and as a professional), (f) knowledge needs (learning to enhance job and professional skills), and (g) aesthetic needs (creativity at work as well as personal creativity and general aesthetics) The measure's convergent and discriminant validities were tested and the data provided support to the construct validity of the QWL measure Furthermore, the measure's nomological (predictive) validity was tested through hypotheses deduced from spillover theory Three studies were conducted – two studies using university employees and the third using accounting firms The results from the pooled sample provided support for the hypotheses and thus lent some support to the nomological validity to the new measure

A New Measure of Quality of Work Life (QWL) Based on Need Satisfaction and Spillover Theories

This study extends prior research on occupational stress and health by examining the crosssectional association of 12 measures of perceived stress to five indicators of self-reported symptoms of ill health andfive medical conditions in a population of blue-collar workers. Net of a variety of confounding factors, including exposure to noxious physical-chemical agents, perceived stress is consistently positively related to self-reported angina, ulcers, and neurotic symptoms and to medical evidence of hypertension and other heart disease risk factors. Perceived stress is also positively associated with self-reported respiratory and dermatological symptoms but only among workers who report exposure to potentially noxious physicalchemical agents. That is, stress seems to exacerbate the deleterious effects of such exposure. The results suggest that occupational stress may affect a wide range of workers and health outcomes. Limitations of the study indicate a need for future longitudinal studies with more medical data on health status and fuller assessment of environmental and genetic factors that may interact with stress in determining health.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2136435.pdf

L R Landerman

Papers

Occupational stress and health among factory workers.