Strain In Stress

           Stress in aspects of ones life such as work and family can put strain on the body and mind in many ways. Many studies have been done, looking at the ways that different stressors affect the body in a variety of ways. Each study focuses on different types of stress, either acute or chronic. Also each study uses a different scale to measure stress. Because of this there are a lot of different results, which cause a lot of discrepancies when trying to discuss the results and come up with one solid hypothesis on the effects of stress and the strain it can cause.

            The study of how stress can cause strain on a person’s health focuses mainly on job related stressors, whether long or short term. By looking at different studies that have been conducted one can compile enough information to see how severe the effects of stress can be. One should also compare how the studies differ in how they measure stress, because different scales can be used. Stressors at home and in the work place can cause physical and psychological strain that can be short or long term and needs to be brought to attention and studied in a more accurate and consistent way.

The study of the strain that stress can put on the body and mind is inconsistent and varies enough to cause discrepancies among those who research it. Peter Y. Chen and Paul E. Spector (1991) examine two different studies conducted on work related stress and discuss how the difference in the way they set up their experiments affected the results that they were getting. In their journal article “Negative Affectivity as the Underlying Cause of Correlations Between Stressors and Strains” they look the experiments done by a variety of psychologists and other professionals that differ in the scales they used to measure stress and the type of stress they tested for.

One possible reason for discrepancy between Brief et al.'s (1988) results and Jex and Specter's (in press) was the use of different measures of NA. Brief et al. (1988) used the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS; Taylor, 1953), whereas Jex and Spector (in press) used the Trait Anxiety scale (TAS) from Spielberger's (1979) State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI). Watson and Clark (1984) identified both scales as alternative measures of NA (p. 399).

After looking at the different scales that have been used, Paul and Spector (1991) found that a lot of what was on the scales over lapped which could mean that the scales used was not what caused the differences in the results, “We closely examined the instruments used in these two studies and noticed that there was considerable item overlap between the TMAS and the other scales used by Brief et al. (1988)” (Chen, 1991, p. 399). What most likely was the main difference was whether chronic or acute stressors were being tested. “There were two reasons why chronic job stressors were included in this study. First, chronic job stressors have been the major target of study in the job-stress literature (Beehr & Franz, 1987; Brief et al., 1988; Eden, 1982; Keenan & Newton, 1984). Second, the effects of chronic stressors tend to be long term (Barling, Bluen, & Fain, 1987), whereas the effects of acute stressors are more transitory (Loo, 1986)” (Chen, 1991, p. 399).

            Although the studies are not consistent with each other the results that come out of them are helpful. A study reported by Gann (2012) on ABC News looked at how a stressful job was putting strain on women’s hearts. The study focused on women in the health field in particular, “Albert and her colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston studied more than 22,000 women in the health care field – nurses, doctors and other professionals who were part of the decade-long Women's Health Study” (Gann, 2012). The study found that many women who said that their jobs were stressful were more likely to have strain put on their hearts, causing heart disease, “women who said their jobs were highly demanding and stressful were 38 percent more likely to have a heart problem” (Gann, 2012). Dov Eden, a professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel conducted research on acute stressors in the work place the relief caused by vacation. Eden (1990) is one the few to study acute stressors because most study is focused on chronic stress. “Investigation of episodic acute stress caused by critical job events (CJEs) that place excessive, transient demands on individuals has been rare (Adams, 1978; Caplan & Jones, 1975; Eden, 1982; Parkes, 1982)” (Eden, 1990, p. 175). In the study, Eden (1990) looked at the stress of critical job events (CTE), general work stress, and vacation time. “Both CJEs aroused levels of subjective stress that were higher than the chronic level measured during routine work, and the vacation provided enough of a respite from demands to evoke still lower reports of stress” (Eden, 1990, p. 189). Another point that Eden (1990) makes is that while stress decreased during vacation, chronic strain remained. “The level of strain measured during both routine work and vacation, in the absence of acutely stressful events, may be the baseline, or chronic level of “background strain” experienced until some critical episode, whether work- or non-work related, produces sufficient stress to increase strain” (Eden, 1990, p.191).

            By looking at different studies done by different professionals one can see there can be strain put on the body because of stress. It is also clear from Eden (1990) that stress can cause chronic strain that affects a person even when they take a vacation. Chen (1991) examined the different studies done on stress causing strain and one can see the that the studies done are not consistent and that results vary greatly. Over all one can conclude that stress does put some amount of strain on a person and more research should be done to better understand it.

-Chris Carter

References

Chen, P. Y., & Spector, P. E. (1991). Negative affectivity as the underlying cause of correlations between stressors and strains. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(3), 398-407. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.76.3.398

Eden, D. (1990). Acute and chronic job stress, strain, and vacation relief. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 45(2). Retrieved April 15, 2013.

Gann, C. (2012, July 18). Stressful Jobs Put Strain on Women’s Hearts, Study Says. ABC News. Retrieved April 15, 2013.