Introduction
Occupational stress is considered as the negative imbalance between work
demands and resources, and it can generate consequences to an individual’s
health and interfere with his or her quality of life.
Objectives
To investigate stress and its associated factors among employees of a higher
education institution through a cross-sectional study (at the baseline of a
longitudinal study) including 176 individuals aged 18 years or older.
Sociodemographic characteristics related to physical surroundings,
lifestyle, working conditions, and health and illness were tested as
explanatory variables.
Methods
Stress was estimated using prevalence rate, prevalence ratio (PR), and a 95%
confidence interval. For a multivariate analysis, we employed a Poisson
regression model with robust variance, where a p-value ≤ 0.05 was
considered significant.
Results
The prevalence of stress was 22.7% (16.48-28.98). This study noticed that
depressive individuals, professors, and those who self-assessed their health
as poor or very poor had a positive association with stress within the
studied population.
Conclusions
Studies of this type are important for identifying characteristics in this
population that could contribute to the planning of public policies in order
to improve the quality of life of employees of public institutions.