Work-related stress and gender identity: A study protocol

Abstract

Background: Among other reasons, the growing prevalence of mental diseases in the last decades is related to elevated work stress. Studies consistently revealed higher subjective stress and burnout levels for women compared to men; however, the biological sex contributed very little to the explanation of variance of these values. The planned study pursues the research of causes regarding these issues. Objective: The effects of the person-environment fit in femininity and masculinity on subjective burnout values, psychosomatic complaints, steroid values in hair samples as biological long-term stress markers and work engagement are examined considering workplace characteristics. This article presents the planned investigation. Material and methods: For the study 411 employees of a medical service company are invited to answer an online questionnaire and to submit hair samples for steroid analysis. Self-assessment scales are used to quantify individual and job-related femininity and masculinity values, workplace characteristics, burnout symptoms, psychosomatic complaints, and work engagement. The person-environment fit is operationalized by subtracting the femininity and masculinity values of the work environment from the corresponding individual values. The values for cortisol, cortisone, DHEA, testosterone and progesterone are determined in the hair samples by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method. Study goal: The effects of femininity and masculinity as a job-related person-environment fit are analyzed as predictors for work-related stress to detect whether these provide more specific explanations compared to recording the sex group.