Multi‐level models of stress and well‐being

Abstract

tional stress researchers may investigate individual factors related to stress and well-being (e.g. personality, work-life balance, emotions, coping skills, etc.); job and organizational factors (e.g., work hours and schedules, role overload/underload/ambiguity, emotional labour, job insecurity, organizational climate); and even societal and national factors (e.g. cultural values; social, economic and environmental indicators). Yet, all too often, these variables are all measured at a single level, usually at the individual level. Thus, while we acknowledge that individual, group, organizational and even cultural variables are theoretically necessary to understand and predict stress outcomes, we rarely measure these variables at their appropriate level. The purpose of this editorial is to encourage researchers to take a multilevel approach to considering the relationships between occupational stress and wellbeing. This entails intentionally refl ecting on the individual, job, organizational and macroeconomic antecedents of employee stress. Such a multilevel framework can be fruitful not only for understanding the stress-strain process, but also crucial in developing and conceptualizing stress interventions. Thus, a multilevel approach can enhance both our theoretical and empirical understanding of occupational stress as well as the practical implications stemming from our research. Using a multi-level modelling (MLM) approach means explicitly taking into account the often hierarchical nature of our data structure (e.g. individuals working in groups, students in classrooms, children in families). Such a hierarchical dataset has traditionally posed three problems within an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression approach: (1) the units of analysis problem; (2) the violation of independent observations assumption problem; and (3) the heterogeneity of slopes problem. Let us consider each in turn. Most behavioural science models of stress acknowledge that a complete understanding of the structure and process of stress invariably requires a consideration of individual, group and environmental/situational characteristics (Sulsky & Smith, 2005). Such models originally arose from an awareness that purely biological models of stress fail to reliably predict which potential stressors will be perceived as stressful and how this process is infl uenced by personal and contextual factors. For example, the cognitive-transactional model of stress (Lazarus & Launier, 1978) posits that there are few, if any, universal stressors. Rather, the perception of and reactions to a potential stressor will vary within and across individuals and may differ over occasions and time. Whether the potential stressor is perceived to be stressful, therefore, intimately depends on characteristics of the individual (e.g. needs, abilities, personality) and the situation (e.g. demands, resources). As a result, most contemporary models of stress include some variation of a person-environment (P-E) fi t perspective [e.g. Karasek’s (1979) demands-control model; Hobfall’s (1989) Conservation of Resources theory; French and colleagues’ P-E fi t model, (French, Caplan, & Van Harrison, 1982, Van Harrison, 1978)]. Despite the fact that our models of stress explicitly consider individual and contextual factors, researchers often do not appropriately model these environmental and individual factors either in their research design, data collection or subsequent analyses. Thus, organiza-