Personal Toolkit for Critiquing Research Articles

Psychology of Stress 386 classhistorical psychosocial intervention for work related stressanswer Week 3 question 2 for my Psychology of Stress 386 classWeek 3 – Question 2:cDiscuss one historical psychosocial intervention for work related stress. Compare that to recent research that is evidence based for reducing workplace stress. Please use credible sources to support your work.You are required to use at least one credible source to support your work as per the syllabus for each discussion question. Please expand your work to three to four substantial paragraphs. To cite in APA style, it should look like this: (Author last name, year). Your citations and references must match. List your full reference at the end of the post in APA style. Use APA peer reviewed journal articles from the last 3-5 years to support your work and demonstrate best practices.Chapter 27: Organizational StressInterventionJoseph J.Hurrell, Jr.During the past 50 years, understanding of the causes of work-related illnesses andinjuries has grown dramatically (Rom, 1998). In contrast, however, knowledge of howto utilize this understanding for prevention and intervention purposes remains limited(Schulte, Goldenhar, & Connally, 1996). This situation is especially troublesome whenone considers not only the human toll of work-related illnesses and injuries but themassive drain on national economies that results from them. As mentioned over 30years ago in Work in America (1973), a seminal report to the U.S. secretary of Health,Education, and Welfare, work represents an institutional tool that could be effectivelyused to improve the health of workers and thereby reduce the staggering costs of healthcare.Nowhere in the field of occupational health is the gap between etiologic andintervention-related knowledge greater than in the realm of organizational (oftencalled occupational or job) stress. Despite the ever burgeoning literature on thenature, causes, and physical and psychological consequences of organizationalstress, surprisingly little is known regarding organizational stress intervention. Theconsequences of this gap may well be reflected in estimates of the enormous costs ofstress to the U.S. economy, which have been estimated to be as high as $300 billionannually (American Institute of Stress, 2002).Before discussing approaches to organizational stress intervention, it is important tohave a common understanding of the organizational stress and the intervention-relatedterminology used in this chapter. Although various theoretical models of stress canbe found in the job stress literature, nearly everyone would agree that “something”called organizational (job or occupational) stress results from an interaction betweenUniversity of Maryland Univers©2005 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledgePage 4 of 34 Handbook of Work Stress: Organizational StressInterventionworkers and the conditions of work (often called job stressors) to which they areexposed. Views differ, however, regarding the importance of worker characteristicsversus working conditions as the major cause of organizational stress, and [p. 624? ] these viewpoints have in part led to the development and use of distinctly differentintervention approaches for occupational stress. The approaches can be characterizedusing a public health prevention terminology as primary, secondary, and tertiaryintervention (Hurrell & Murphy, 1996). The aim of primary prevention intervention is toreduce the risk factors or job stressors; the aim of secondary prevention intervention(often termed stress management) is to alter the ways that individuals respond torisks or job stressors; and finally, the aim of tertiary prevention intervention is toheal those who have been traumatized (Quick, Quick, Nelson, & Hurrell, 1997). Assecondary organizational stress prevention has been the subject of extensive reviews(see, e.g., Murphy, 1988, 1996; van der Hek & Plomp, 1997) and is discussed in thishandbook, it will not be considered here. Rather, this chapter will attempt to providean understanding of the less scrutinized primary and tertiary organizational stressprevention intervention literature.Primary Prevention InterventionA major challenge to understanding and drawing conclusions from the job stressintervention literature in general involves the diverse and at times confusing terminologyused by investigators and reviewers to characterize job stress interventions. Forexample, several recent review articles (van der Klink, Blonk, Schene, & van Dijk,2001; and Reynolds, 2000) have compared the efficacy of various types of individualoccupational stress interventions (secondary and in some cases tertiary interventionefforts) relative to organizational level and organizational-focused interventions. Theirconclusions suggest that the effects on employee well-being of the latter type areinsignificant or ineffective. Unfortunately, these reviews include only a small number ofprimary prevention studies and categorize a variety of different types of interventionsunder the rubric of “organizational.” As a result, they draw conclusions that may befar too general in nature. Indeed, it is somewhat distressing that such conclusions arereported in journals targeted to public health practitioners who upon reading them maybe tempted to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Although primary preventionFollow this link to get a similar paper written from scratch