Abstract
The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of job strain and sleep quality on the diurnal pattern of cortisol reactivity, measured by awakening and evening (10 PM) saliva cortisol. The sample consisted of 76 British white-collar workers (24 women, 52 men; mean age 45.8 years). Sleep quality and job strain were assessed in a survey distributed just before the cortisol sampling. Both input variables were dichotomized about the median and factorial ANOVA was used for the statistical analysis. Low sleep quality was significantly associated with lower morning cortisol secretion. While job strain had no main effects on the cortisol reactivity there was a significant interaction effect between the input variables on morning cortisol secretion. These findings tentatively support the hypothesis that lack of sleep for workers with high job strain may result in a flattened diurnal cortisol reactivity.
Highlights
The performance of work requires mental and physical effort resulting in short term psychological and physiological load reactions that can be experienced as physiological or emotional arousal, or in the case when individual capacity for performing work is exceeded, the experience is stress andInt
The purpose of the present study was to analyze how job strain, sleep quality and their interactions affected awakening and evening saliva cortisol secretion measured each day over 7 consecutive days
A comparison between the participants in the study and non-participants in the initial sampling pool revealed that there were no significant differences in age nor were there any differences in baseline job strain
Summary
The performance of work requires mental and physical effort resulting in short term psychological and physiological load reactions that can be experienced as physiological or emotional arousal, or in the case when individual capacity for performing work is exceeded, the experience is stress andInt. The performance of work requires mental and physical effort resulting in short term psychological and physiological load reactions that can be experienced as physiological or emotional arousal, or in the case when individual capacity for performing work is exceeded, the experience is stress and. Res. Public Health 2013, 10 fatigue [1,2,3]. Public Health 2013, 10 fatigue [1,2,3] These load reactions can result from psychosocial hazards, a term used to describe aspects of the design and management of work, and its social and organizational contexts that have the potential for causing psychological or physical harm [4]. The management of psychosocial hazards has been recognized as a major challenge to occupational health and safety, and public health [5,6]
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