Noise, psychosocial stress and their interaction in the workplace

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Abstract

Occupational noise exposure has been linked with a range of negative health effects, with recent research emphasizing the need to understand the full context of sound events in explaining these relationships. An emerging theme within environmental psychology argues that physical features of the environment might work both directly on outcomes and interactively with either psychosocial work elements. In the present study, the interaction of noise with psychosocial job stress was explored for 128 office workers employed by a government agency in a city in the Midlands region of the UK. The results showed no direct effect of ambient noise levels upon job satisfaction, well-being or organizational commitment. However, lower levels of ambient noise were found to buffer the negative impact of psychosocial job stress upon these same three outcomes. Psychosocial job stress is, therefore, seen as a valuable heuristic in operationazing the context of sound events at work.

Introduction

Exposure to occupational noise, that is, unwanted sound, has been linked with variety of adverse effects upon well-being over and above its obvious relationship with hearing loss (Jansen (1970), Kryter (1994)). In industrial settings, for example, noise exposure has been found to be associated with a range of indicators of physical health, including cardiac problems (Jansen, 1961; Cuesdan et al., 1977); sickness-related absenteeism (Cohen,1973); and self-reported fatigue (Carlestam, Karlslon, & Levi, 1973). Similarly, McDonald (1989) reported a dose-response relationship among blue collar workers between occupational noise exposure and symptoms of psychological distress. That noise has a negative impact upon job satisfaction is well documented (Langdon, 1966; Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973; Boyce, 1974). Office workers, in particular, consistently report “the ability to concentrate without noise and other distractions” to be one of the most important aspects of the work environment (Sundstrom, Town, Rice Osborn and Brill (1978), Louis Harris & Associates (1980)). In a survey of office renovations, Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, and Brill (1994) found declining job satisfaction amongst those office workers who experienced an increase in noise from two sources: telephones ringing and piped-in background music. In this same study, environmental satisfaction, but not overall job satisfaction, was also found to be inversely related to the amount of noise deriving from people talking on the telephone and from typewriters.

Importantly, many studies have also demonstrated that these various negative effects of exposure to occupational noise are often contingent upon either the characteristics of the task at hand, or features of the broader work context. Nurminen and Kurppa (1989), for example, reported that pregnancy complications in women working under very noisy conditions were exacerbated when they were also subjected to the additional demands of shiftwork. Indeed, the interactive effect of occupational noise exposure and shiftwork upon various health indices is a consistently reported theme in the literature (see, for example, Cesana et al., 1982; Ottman, Rutenfranz, Neidhart, & Boucsein, (1987).

Carter and Beh (1989) and Mosskov and Ettema (1977) both report that the usual rapid habituation in elevated cardiovascular responses to acute noise exposure is blocked when people are simultaneously performing demanding cognitive tasks. A similar interactive effect of noise and task demands was reported by Welch (1979) who found, in a study of Russian manufacturing plant, elevated cardiovascular functioning only amongst those workers exposed to both louder noise and higher levels of workload demands. Likewise, Cottington, Matthews, Talbott and Kuller (1983) reported a significant interaction between noise and job stress on diastolic blood pressure levels in a further sample of manufacturing workers. Lercher, Hortnagl, and Kofler (1993) found that a small positive association between noise exposure and diastolic blood pressure was amplified among those workers who also reported low levels of social support on the job.

As with its effects upon health outcomes, so the influence of occupational noise exposure upon performance has been found to be contingent upon a number of factors, including the nature of the noise and the type of task involved. Essentially, two summary conclusions can be drawn from the many laboratory investigations of the negative effects of noise upon performance. First, that the effects of unpredictable noise are more severe than are those of predictable noise. Second, that any negative effect of noise increases with task complexity. Thus, it is the interaction of unpredictable noise and high task complexity which has been found to result in increased errors in calculation, tracking and monitoring tasks, slower learning of new material and poorer recall and memorization (Sundstrom, 1986).

The overall conclusion to be drawn from the research investigating the effects of occupational noise upon both well-being and performance is that the full context of the situation needs to be taken into account when trying to understand those effects. Further evidence for this conclusion comes from the fact that technical noise measures explain only part of the inter-individual variance reported in noise annoyance (Kjellberg, Landstrom, Tesarz, Soderberg, & Akerlund, 1996). As Kjellberg et al. (1996) point out; nonphysical noise characteristics and other situational and individual characteristics are also of great importance in determining subjective responses to noise. There is, they argue, a fundamental need to understand the full context of sound events when researching the possible effects of noise. The potential for noise to interact with task constraints and other situational variables represents a major feature of this context.

Evans and Lepore (1992) and Evans, Johansson, and Carrere (1994) offer a conceptual and methodological framework that provides a valuable way of investigating the context of sound events in the workplace. Any feature of the physical environment, they argue, might work both directly on outcomes and/or interactively with either (a) psychosocial work elements or (b) other physical elements. It is with the first of these possible interactions that the present paper is concerned. Specifically, the idea to be explored here is that the effect of noise upon work outcomes might be either direct or indirect in nature. In suggesting a possible indirect influencing mechanism, an interaction is being hypothesized between noise and a particular psychosocial factor, i.e. job stress.

Stress is operationalized in terms of Karasek's model of job strain (karasek, 1979; Karasek & Theorell, 1990), wherein strain results from the interaction of high job demands and low decision latitude. If noise does interact with job stress, then any negative impact should be greatest under conditions of both high stress and higher noise levels. Put another way, lower levels of noise might serve to buffer any negative effect of job strain Moreover, this pattern of results should hold across a range of negative outcomes commonly associated with occupational stress, such as reduced job satisfaction, impaired health and well-being, and increased psychological withdrawal (Cox (1978), Cox (1985); Cooper, 1985; Beehr, 1995).

As reviewed above, there are several lines of evidence in the research literature that implicitly or explicitly support this noise × job stress interaction hypothesis. Laboratory studies, for example, have shown significant, increases in cardiovascular and neuroendocrine functioning to occur when individuals are exposed to noise during demanding mental tasks (Tafalla, Evan, & Cohen, 1988). Shift workers are similarly at greater risk of health complaints when working in noisy occupational settings as compared to relatively quiet ambient conditions (Manninen, 1990). Matthews, Cottington, Talbott, Kuller, and Siegel (1987) found a parallel interaction between noise and job satisfaction, such that noise heightened job dissatisfaction only amongst those workers who were also unhappy with their jobs.

Leather, Pyrgas, Beale, and Lawrence (1998) explored as similar interaction between windows in the workplace and job stress as that now being investigated between noise and job stress. Postulating multiple influencing mechanisms by which windows might impact upon work outcomes, they found that sunlight penetration had a direct effect on job satisfaction, intention to quit and general well-being. Access to a view of nature, on the other hand, was found to buffer the negative impact of job stress on intention to quit and to have a similar, marginal, effect on general well-being.

In light of the growing recognition of the importance of possible interactions between physical and psychosocial work elements, two specific hypotheses are tested in this paper with respect to the impact of occupational noise exposure:

Hypothesis 1

Higher noise levels will be associated with lower job satisfaction, lower organizational commitment and poorer well-being (main effects).

Hypothesis 2

Noise exposure and job stress will interact such that lower levels of noise will buffer any negative effect of job strain, organizational commitment and well-being (moderator effect).

It should also be recognized that a direct effect of job strain upon job satisfaction, organizational commitment and well-being is tested in this moderator model (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Evans & Lepore, 1992; Evans et al., 1994). However, since the focus of this paper is upon the impact of noise with job strain being used as a means of operationalizing the importance of context, such direct effects will only be commented upon in passing.

Section snippets

Location and subjects

The study was carried out within the offices of a local government finance department situated in a city center location in the Midlands area of the UK. The employees sampled worked in two separated buildings located on either side of a narrow street. Both buildings were air-conditioned and had windows that gave access entirely to similar urban views.

All employees working in the two buildings were given a questionnaire. A total of 143 questionnaires were distributed and 128 were returned,

Reliability analyses

As Table 1 shows, all the measures displayed satisfactory reliability, having Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients in excess of the minimum recommended value of 0.7 (Nunally, 1978), with the exception of Karasek's decision latitude scale. The decision latitude scale was, therefore, subjected to exploratory factor analysis, the results of which are detailed in Table 2. The 5-item single factor solution that resulted was used in the subsequent calculation of job strain, in preference to the

Discussion

With respect to the impact of noise, the pattern of results reported in this paper is consistent across the three dependent measures used. Specifically, ambient noise level was found to have no direct effect upon job satisfaction, organizational commitment or self-reported symptoms of ill-health. Hypothesis 1 is therefore not supported by the data. Ambient noise level did, however, interact with job strain to produce a significant effect upon all three outcomes. Hypothesis 2 is therefore

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