Comparative Analysis And Evaluation Of Occupational Stress In Control Activities

Psychosocial factors (PSF) are leading among the new risks and modern challenges in providing safe and healthy conditions at work. Due to the high mental strain, inspectors are at highest risk for stress at work. The aim of the present study was to make a comparative analysis of PSFs in control activities, rate them and investigate subjective perception of stress at work. Two exhaustive cross-sectional studies were conducted consecutively, involving 338 and 355 inspectors, respectively, working at two organizations with control activities. The inspectors were men and women aged from 24 to 70. The statistical processing of data utilized the SPSS software version 17, at a significance level of p<0.05. A number of common characteristics were found in the activities, the composition and structure of different groups of government staff: the number of women was greater (58% и 62.6%), with people over 40 years of age prevailing (67.3% и 70.9%), and the group with specialized work experience of 6 to 10 years comprised the greatest number of people. We found reliable differences in the answers concerning task requirements and activity organization. Rating PSF, one of the groups of inspectors placed “insufficient time to perform the check-up” in the first place, whereas the other one reported “conflicts while performing the check-up”. PSFs exert an influence on the cognitive functions of inspectors, change their behaviour and emotional reactions and result in more frequent complaints of health deterioration. We found difference in the subjective stress perception depending on gender, age and duration of work experience as an inspector.