Article
Job Satisfaction Among Mental Health Workers Associations With Respiratory Sinus Reactivity to, and Recovery From Exposure to Mental Stress William H. O’Brien,1 Paul W. Goetz,2 Heather McCarren,3 Eileen Delaney,4 William F. Morrison,1 Tanya S. Watford,1 and Kristin A. Horan1 1
Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, USA
2
Division of Cardiac Surgery, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
3
VHA National Center for Organization Development, Cincinnati, OH, USA
4
Naval Center for Combat and Occupational Stress Control (NCCOSC), San Diego, CA, USA
Abstract: Work characteristics such as job satisfaction have been associated with mental and physical health outcomes in several crosssectional and longitudinal studies. However, meta-analytic reviews indicate that nearly all of the reported relationships between these two sets of constructs rely on self-report measures. Thus, the magnitude of the reported relationships may be inaccurate and inflated due to common method variance (mono-method bias) and negative affectivity. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is an objective measure of risk for adverse mental health and physical health outcomes. To our knowledge, there has been no investigation of the relationship between job satisfaction and respiratory sinus arrhythmia. In this investigation, 29 workers in mental health settings who experience higher than average levels of work stress due to the amount and unpredictability of workload completed sociodemographic measures and a job satisfaction measure. RSA was then collected during a resting baseline, a worry induction stressor condition where they were instructed to think about work stressors, and a post-stress recovery condition. RSA reactivity to the stressor was significantly greater for participants with low job satisfaction. The low job satisfaction participants also demonstrated less RSA recovery after the stressor ended. Alternatively, participants with higher job satisfaction reacted less and recovered more completely from the stressor. Keywords: respiratory sinus arrhythmia, job satisfaction
Workers who provide services to persons with mental health problems such as intellectual disabilities (ID) can experience significant work stress and low levels of job satisfaction which have been linked to turnover rates and intent to quit (Gray-Stanley et al., 2010; Larson, Lakin, & Bruininks, 1998; Lunsky, Hastings, Hensel, Arenovich, & Dewa, 2014; Mutkins, Brown, & Thorsteinsson, 2011; Rose, Home, Rose, & Hastings, 2004). Workplace factors that have been linked to work stress and low job satisfaction among persons working with ID populations include problematic client behaviors (Mitchell & Hastings, 2001; Skirrow & Hatton, 2007), perceived lack of support (Rose, 1993), role ambiguity (Hatton, Rashes, Caine, & Emerson, 1995), and unpredictable workloads. Job satisfaction has been associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes. For example, Faragher, Cass, and Cooper (2005) conducted a comprehensive metaanalysis of research investigating relationships between job Journal of Psychophysiology (2019), 33(1), 32–38 https://doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000203
satisfaction and mental and physical health outcomes. Their meta-analysis provided important insights into this research domain. First, job satisfaction was moderately correlated with several self-reported mental health states such as burnout (overall unadjusted r = .409), depressed mood (overall unadjusted r = .366), and anxiety (overall unadjusted r = .354). Second, job satisfaction was correlated, to a lesser extent, with self-reported physical symptoms (overall unadjusted r = .235). Third, job satisfaction was very modestly correlated with more objective physical health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease (overall unadjusted r = .121) and musculoskeletal disease (overall unadjusted r = .078). Finally, their results indicated that the evaluation of relationships between job satisfaction and these outcomes overwhelmingly relied on self-report measures. As such, it is difficult to parse out the effects of method bias as well as negative affectivity in the existing literature. Nonetheless, it is important to note, as did Faragher et al. (2005), that job Ó 2017 Hogrefe Publishing
