Prevelance of psychological distress, factors associated with work stress and coping strategies adapted by Information Technology Professionals.

Abstract

A descriptive cross sectional study using cluster sampling with probability proportionate to size. Study instrument was a self administered questionnaire (developed as an electronic form with HTML) . It was observed that 55 percent of participants were doing extra duty more than five hours per week. Only 5 percent of participants were paid for extra duty. The prevalence of psychological distress (GHQ score 2: 6) among IT professionals was 41 percent. Excessive work load, lack of rewards, lack of opportunity to career development and organizational decisions regarding dead lines were main stressors for majority of participants in the study group. A lower proportion of participants were affected by stressors like monotony, ambiguity, relationships with superiors/co-workers. There is a statistical significant (p 0.001) association between psychological distress and work stress. Factors associated with high level of work stress were age, marital status, employment status of spouse, health problems, years of service at present organization, extra work hours and weekend duty. Higher proportion of study sample preferred to adapt harmless coping strategies but some have adapted harmful coping strategies like smoking (5 percent) and alcohol (7 percent). Interventions like training programmes for stress management and conducting awareness programmes for managers at IT Organizations can be recommended to make IT field a more worker-friendly.