Psychological stress among un-organized building construction workers in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

Abstract

Background: Workers who are stressed are more likely to be unhealthy, poorly motivated, less productive and less safe at work. Job stress is believed to be one of the causes of absenteeism, low workers morale, high rate of accident and poor turnover rates. Aims and Objectives: To study the socio-demographic aspect of unorganized workers and Psychological stress among them. Study Design: Cross-sectional. Study Setting: Construction sites in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Materials and Methods: For data collection researchers were used instrument “The Stress Inventory Scale designed and developed by Gerard Hargreaves from the stress Management: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Working Smarter” for the measures of results in the present study., Statistics: For continuous variables range, mean and standard deviation will be calculated and for categorical variables proportion and percentage will be obtained. To know the association between dependent and independent variable chi-square or z-test will be applied accordingly. Results: Almost 85% participants have high stress and 2% participants have extreme high stress unmarried participants had more significant high stress [48/82, 58.5%, X2 = 5.81, p <0.05] than married participants. Study did not found significant association of stress level with age, sex and literacy level. Conclusion: Study found that most of construction worker were suffering from stress. Insomnia, headache and sleeping problems were the result of stress. stress can be reduce by applying the concept of level of prevention through ergonomics, work design, organizational development, workers training & counseling, pre-placement & periodic examination, enhanced occupational health services.