Conclusion on Stress Interventions

Taken together, the literature on stress intervention concepts and studies suggests a number of conclusions. First, stress intervention studies go under very different names and are presented in very different disciplines and journals. Stress management studies are done by clinicians or clinical work psychologists and are mainly published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology or the International Jour­nal of Stress Management. Lifestyle changes are reported in sports psychology and in medical journals. Rest period studies appear in human factors journals, mainly ergonomics and new technology journals. Stressor reduction and re­source enhancement is done by job enrichment and job de­sign professionals and appear in Academy of Management Journal, Human Relations, and other outlets. Social resource enhancement—for example, social support increase—is re­ally part of teaching management skills and appear, for example, in Leadership Quarterly. Obviously many articles also appear in the more general journals, such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Applied Psychology: An International Review; we think that it pays to pull these diverse areas together and gain by using theories across different intervention domains. The best developed areas of stress interventions are rest peri­ods (although the literature in this area is quite old), stress management techniques, and lifestyle changes. These areas are easier to study because they can be studied experimen­tally (particularly rest periods) and only imply changes of individuals. Organizational approaches have been studied much less frequently because they are more difficult to study; there is a need to look at moderators (e.g., how well the program is supported by management and how well it is implemented), and these studies are much more risky

because many aspects cannot be controlled by the change agent.

Second, nearly every review of the field speaks about the importance of doing more studies in the area of organiza­tional changes. We can only repeat this call. Most authors assume that it makes sense to combine structural and institu­tional changes with individually oriented approaches, at least for blue-collar workers (e.g., Bamberg & Busch, 1996; Ivancevich, Matteson, Freedman, & Phillips, 1990; Kompier, Cooper, et al., 2000; Murphy, 1996).

Third, practically every review on stress intervention tech­niques has called for better designed studies in this area. Be­cause there seems to be a relationship between effect size and study design (Murphy, 1996), this issue needs to be taken se­riously. Undoubtedly, better research has been done within the last 15-20 years—particularly in the area of stress man-

^agement and lifestyle changes.

9 Forth, one issue of improving design is related to the fact that there are nonspecific effects of stress management. A notreatment control group does not actually account for nonspecific effects; it is therefore necessary to include pseudotreatment control into designs because merely think­ing about stress at work and self-reflecting may actually enhance health outcomes as well.

Fifth, most studies only look at short-term changes, but we need to be able to produce long-term changes with stress in­terventions. Both in the areas of job interventions and in stress management, there are hypotheses in the literature that the effects are mainly short term.

Sixth, by and large, more process-oriented research on stress interventions needs to be done (Bunce, 1997). This can be done by developing manuals as well as by checking how much trainers conform to the theoretically proposed procedures, how much of the effect was due to the specific program, and how much of the effect was due to general effects. Good examples for such an approach exist in the clinical psy­chology—particularly cognitive therapy—approaches to de­pression (e.g., Castonguay, Hayes, Goldfried, & DeRubeis, 1995; DeRubeis et al., 1990; Hollon, DeRubeis, & Evans, 1987).

Seventh, research on respites from work stress is a promis­ing area of research (Eden, 2001). More studies are needed that famine the specific features—predictors as well as short- and long-term consequences—of successful respite periods.

Eighth, some authors have confronted emotion-focused versus problem-focused approaches of stress interventions ^<e-g-> Bond & Bunce, 2000). We agree with Keinan and Fried-•*nd (1996; p. 269) that a simple comparison cannot be made ^d leads to inconclusive results and that the following issues "eed to be considered: (a) Emotion-focused strategies may be

Overall Conclusions 479

better in situations that allow little control and other resources; (b) the long-term effectiveness of emotion-focused strategies may be lower than that for problem-focused approaches; (c) a combination of emotion- and problem-focused strategies is probably superior to either one of them alone.

Finally, more research is needed that pits different ap­proaches against each other. One of the most important is­sues is whether there are general and specific effects of an intervention (Bunce, 1997; Murphy, 1996). Trainer charac­teristics also need to be studied more frequently. For exam­ple, one study surprisingly showed that less well-trained trainers were more effective in stress management than were experienced trainers (Saunders et al., 1996). Another surpris­ing finding of the meta-analysis by Van der Klink et al. (2001) that needs to be studied in more detail is that there is an inverse relationship between number of sessions and effect size.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 782