Analysis of Different Factors of Occupational Stress and Associated Health Problems in West Bengal

Abstract

In this modern era, stress becomes a major and relevant problem almost all over the world. Due to increasing trend of stress in every aspect of human life, the 21st century may be looked upon as a century of the stress. Even as days progress, the participation of women in different occupational sector is significantly increasing along with male. Recently, stress is also rising due to globalization and global financial crisis. Occupational stress mainly arises due to unsuitable environment, excessive workload, long time to work, multidimensional work, less salary, non-permanent job, lack of task control, poor relation with higher authority, etc. the main objective of this paper is to find out various factors of occupational stress in West Bengal. In West Bengal, there are various government and non-government sectors with organized and unorganized divisions. Primary data, related to occupational stress, have been collected from the districts of West Bengal. A five-points Likert scale has been used to estimate occupational stress. The average stress score has been determined for the people of rural and urban areas and government and non-government sectors. Chi-square test is applied to test hypotheses related to occupational stress. Factor analysis is implemented to identify the key factors which may directly affect on occupational stress. Logistic regression analysis is utilized to test the significant impacts of few vital socio-economic factors on occupational stress. Mental and physical health issues among the respondents for occupational stress have been identified. The result shows that there is a moderate occupational stress on an average among the employees of West Bengal. However, there is a significant difference in the stress level among rural and urban people as well as government and non-government workers. The result also illustrates that job type, age, occupation, environment of workplace, spending hours at office place, help from colleagues, promotion system, pressure to perform have highly significant impact on occupational stress.