The association between day-to-day stress experiences and work-life interference among office workers in academia: an ecological momentary assessment study.

PURPOSE: We investigated relations between day-to-day job demands, job control, job strain, social support at work, and day-to-day work-life interference among office workers in academia. METHODS: This study is based on a 15-working day data collection period using an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) implemented in our self-developed STRAW smartphone application. We recruited office workers from two academic settings in Belgium and Slovenia. Participants were repeatedly asked to complete EMAs including work stressors and work interfering with personal life (WIPL) as well as personal life interfering with work (PLIW). We applied fixed-effect model testing with random intercepts to investigate within- and between-participant levels. RESULTS: We included 55 participants with 2261 analyzed observations in this study. Our data showed that researchers with a PhD reported higher WIPL compared to administrative and technical staff (ß = 0.37, p < 0.05). We found significant positive associations between job demands (ß = 0.53, p < 0.001), job control (ß = 0.19, p < 0.01), and job strain (ß = 0.61, p < 0.001) and WIPL. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction effect between job control and social support at work on WIPL (ß = - 0.24, p < 0.05). Additionally, a significant negative association was found between job control and PLIW (ß = - 0.20, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Based on our EMA study, higher job demands and job strain were correlated with higher WIPL. Furthermore, we found associations going in opposite directions; higher job control was correlated with higher WIPL and lower PLIW. Higher job control leading to higher imbalance stands out as a novel result.

Work environment risk factors causing day-to-day stress in occupational settings: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: While chronic workplace stress is known to be associated with health-related outcomes like mental and cardiovascular diseases, research about day-to-day occupational stress is limited. This systematic review includes studies assessing stress exposures as work environment risk factors and stress outcomes, measured via self-perceived questionnaires and physiological stress detection. These measures needed to be assessed repeatedly or continuously via Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) or similar methods carried out in real-world work environments, to be included in this review. The objective was to identify work environment risk factors causing day-to-day stress. METHODS: The search strategies were applied in seven databases resulting in 11833 records after deduplication, of which 41 studies were included in a qualitative synthesis. Associations were evaluated by correlational analyses. RESULTS: The most commonly measured work environment risk factor was work intensity, while stress was most often framed as an affective response. Measures from these two dimensions were also most frequently correlated with each other and most of their correlation coefficients were statistically significant, making work intensity a major risk factor for day-to-day workplace stress. CONCLUSIONS: This review reveals a diversity in methodological approaches in data collection and data analysis. More studies combining self-perceived stress exposures and outcomes with physiological measures are warranted.

The association between day-to-day stress experiences, recovery, and work engagement among office workers in academia-An Ecological Momentary Assessment study.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the associations between day-to-day work-related stress exposures (i.e., job demands and lack of job control), job strain, and next-day work engagement among office workers in academic settings. Additionally, we assessed the influence of psychological detachment and relaxation on next-day work engagement and tested for interaction effects of these recovery variables on the relationship between work-related stressors and next-day work engagement. METHODS: Office workers from two academic settings in Belgium and Slovenia were recruited. This study is based on an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) with a 15-working day data collection period using our self-developed STRAW smartphone application. Participants were asked repeatedly about their work-related stressors, work engagement, and recovery experiences. Fixed-effect model testing using random intercepts was applied to investigate within- and between-participant levels. RESULTS: Our sample consisted of 55 participants and 2710 item measurements were analysed. A significant positive association was found between job control and next-day work engagement (ß = 0.28, p < 0.001). Further, a significant negative association was found between job strain and next-day work engagement (ß = -0.32, p = 0.05). Furthermore, relaxation was negatively associated with work engagement (ß = -0.08, p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: This study confirmed previous results, such as higher job control being associated with higher work engagement and higher job strain predicting lower work engagement. An interesting result was the association of higher relaxation after the working day with a lower next-day work engagement. Further research investigating fluctuations in work-related stressors, work engagement, and recovery experiences is required.

How does day-to-day stress appraisal relate to coping among office workers in academia? An ecological momentary assessment study.

Existing literature indicates that academic staff experience increasing levels of work stress. This study investigated associations between day-to-day threat and challenge appraisal and day-to-day problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and seeking social support among academic office workers. This study is based on an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) design with a 15-working day data collection period utilising our self-developed STRAW smartphone application. A total of 55 office workers from academic institutions in Belgium (n = 29) and Slovenia (n = 26) were included and 3665 item measurements were analysed. Participants were asked approximately every 90 min about their appraisal of stressful events (experienced during the working day) and their coping styles. For data analysis, we used an unstructured covariance matrix in our linear mixed models. Challenge appraisal predicted problem-focused coping and threat appraisal predicted emotion-focused coping. Our findings suggest an association between threat appraisal as well as challenge appraisal and seeking social support. Younger and female workers chose social support more often as a coping style. While working from home, participants were less likely to seek social support. The findings of our EMA study confirm previous research on the relationship between stress appraisal and coping with stress. Participants reported seeking social support less while working from home compared to working at the office, making the work location an aspect that deserves further research.

Sources of Occupational Stress among Office Workers-A Focus Group Study.

Workplace stress remains a major interest of occupational health research, usually based on theoretical models and quantitative large-scale studies. Office workers are especially exposed to stressors such as high workload and time pressure. The aim of this qualitative research was to follow a phenomenological approach to identify work stressors as they are perceived by office workers. Six focus groups with office workers of different occupations were conducted in Belgium and Slovenia. A total of 39 participants were included in the study. We used the RQDA software for data processing and analysis and the seven job-quality indices of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) to structure our findings. The results show that work intensity and social environment proved to be main stress categories, followed by skills and discretion, prospects, and working time quality. The physical environment and earnings were not covered in our results. We created organisational (structural/process-oriented and financial) stressors and office workers' physical health as two additional categories since these topics did not fit into the EWCS. While our findings mainly confirm data from existing occupational stress literature and emphasise the multi-level complexity of work stress experiences, this paper suggests that there are relevant stressors experienced by office workers beyond existing quantitative frameworks.

Ionization energy and energy gap structure of MoSI molecular wires: Kelvin probe, ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry measurements.

The work function W of Mo(6)S(3)I(6) molecular nanowires is determined by Kelvin probe (KP) measurements, UV photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), and cyclic voltammetry (CV). The values obtained by all three methods agree well, giving W = 4.8 ± 0.1 eV. CV measurements also give a gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) of E(g) = 1.2 ± 0.1 eV, in agreement with recent optical measurements, but in disagreement with theoretical calculations, which predict the material to be a metal. The electronic structure of Mo(6)S(3)I(6) suggests use of the material in applications such as bulk heterostructure photovoltaics and transparent electrodes and for molecular electronics devices.

Protocol of the STRess at Work (STRAW) Project: How to Disentangle Day-to-Day Occupational Stress among Academics Based on EMA, Physiological Data, and Smartphone Sensor and Usage Data.

Several studies have reported on increasing psychosocial stress in academia due to work environment risk factors like job insecurity, work-family conflict, research grant applications, and high workload. The STRAW project adds novel aspects to occupational stress research among academic staff by measuring day-to-day stress in their real-world work environments over 15 working days. Work environment risk factors, stress outcomes, health-related behaviors, and work activities were measured repeatedly via an ecological momentary assessment (EMA), specially developed for this project. These results were combined with continuously tracked physiological stress responses using wearable devices and smartphone sensor and usage data. These data provide information on workplace context using our self-developed Android smartphone app. The data were analyzed using two approaches: 1) multilevel statistical modelling for repeated data to analyze relations between work environment risk factors and stress outcomes on a within- and between-person level, based on EMA results and a baseline screening, and 2) machine-learning focusing on building prediction models to develop and evaluate acute stress detection models, based on physiological data and smartphone sensor and usage data. Linking these data collection and analysis approaches enabled us to disentangle and model sources, outcomes, and contexts of occupational stress in academia.

Structural Basis of Epitope Recognition by Heavy-Chain Camelid Antibodies.

Truncated versions of heavy-chain antibodies (HCAbs) from camelids, also termed nanobodies, comprise only one-tenth the mass of conventional antibodies, yet retain similar, high binding affinities for the antigens. Here we analyze a large data set of nanobody-antigen crystal structures and investigate how nanobody-antigen recognition compares to the one by conventional antibodies. We find that nanobody paratopes are enriched in aromatic residues just like conventional antibodies, but additionally, they also bear a more hydrophobic character. Most striking differences were observed in the characteristics of the antigen's epitope. Unlike conventional antibodies, nanobodies bind to more rigid, concave, conserved and structured epitopes enriched with aromatic residues. Nanobodies establish fewer interactions with the antigens compared to conventional antibodies, and we speculate that high binding affinities are achieved due to less unfavorable conformational and more favorable solvation entropy contributions. We observed that interactions with antigen are mediated not only by three CDR loops but also by numerous residues from the nanobody framework. These residues are not distributed uniformly; rather, they are concentrated into four structurally distinct regions and mediate mostly charged interactions. Our findings suggest that in some respects nanobody-antigen interactions are more similar to the general protein-protein interactions rather than antibody-antigen interactions.