The Job Stress-Social Support Buffering Hypothesis: Employees' Gender, Education, and Collar Color.

Occupational stress is specific to the workplace and tends to be a global term used to describe stressors, the occupational conditions that cause difficulties for an individual, and strains, the conditions resulting from experiencing work stressors. While the effects of occupational stress on employees are well documented, this study further examined occupational stress with an emphasis on the possibility that social support from persons at work and/or at home may have a moderating effect on an employee's experience of stress. Subjects were employees of a medium-sized municipality in central Michigan. Subjects (N=181, out of a sample of 468) completed mailed questionnaires examining, among other things, life changes, job satisfaction, social support received, job stressors, depression, life satisfaction, and somatic complaints. Stressors examined (life stress, role conflict, role ambiguity, quantitative workload, skill utilization, work variability, and responsibility) explained 34% of the variance in outcome variables of job satisfaction, life satisfaction, somatic complaints, and depression. Twenty-four percent of the variance in outcome measures was explained by social support received from supervisors, coworkers and friends/family. Overall, it appeared than when role conflict was high, coworker support was important in employees' perceptions of job satisfaction and depression. Additional findings suggest that there might be reverse buffering among blue collar workers and "normal" buffering among white collar workers. (NB)