Resources of Psychological Health in the Context of Daily Work-Related Stressors

Abstract

Background. Daily work-related stressors, unlike major (life) negative events, are characterized by a lower intensity, however, due to a higher frequency of occurrence, they can lead to mental overstrain and chronic stress. In the modern realities of multitasking the search and study of psychological resources available to a person on a daily basis is of particular importance.

Objective. To study the contribution of a healthy lifestyle and daily positive events to overcoming everyday stress associated with professional activity.

Study Participants. The study involved 155 respondents aged 20 to 56 years (M_age = 31.1; SD = 9.2; 32.3% men, 67.7% women) living in St. Petersburg, Leningrad region and Moscow. The selection method is a random sampling.

Methods. "Profile of a healthy lifestyle" (Petrash, Strizhitskaya, Murtazina, 2018); Questionnaire of everyday stressors (Petrash et al., 2018); authors' questionnaire of everyday positive events; "Scale of perceived stress-10" (Ababkov, 2016), a socio-demographic questionnaire. The results were processed by means of "IBM SPSS Statistics 22", "AMOS" and "Microsoft Excel". Mathematical statistics methods included the descriptive statistics, cluster analysis (k-means), univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA), structural equation modeling (SEM).

Results. The study revealed that respondents with the lowest level of perceived stress are characterized by a greater desire to develop internal resources and achieve self-realization as well as the ability to recognize sources of stress. The analysis allowed to construct a structural model demonstrating the contribution of lifestyle parameters and daily positive events to coping with stress associated with professional activity.

Conclusions. The parameters of lifestyle and daily positive events contribute to reducing the efforts spent by a person on stress management, which leads to reducing overstain and, as a result, a decrease in the subjectively perceived intensity of stressors associated with professional sphere. Professional achievements, interpersonal communication, inner growth, and the ability to recognize sources of stress can serve as resources for coping with stress.

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