The goal of the proposed research is to understand the sequential patterning of job demands as a factor leading to overload stress and thereby contributing to emotional burnout in human service employees. Specifically, this study will use previously collected data to examine the effects of externally imposed task interruption on the employee's level of overload stress. Interruptions are likely to be a key factor contributing to overload stress because of service employees' inability to prevent their occurrence or control their timing and duration. The subjects are 73 nonsupervisory police officers and civilians working as radio dispatchers. Dispatchers play a critical role in police effectiveness since they screen all complaints from the public and decide whether to send a patrol officer. Observations were collected over 1,000 hours and yielded detailed descriptions of more than 84,000 units of activity. These data will be analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression and other appropriate multivariate techniques. Analyses will address specific questions concerning the effects of interruption and the Type A behavior pattern on employees' feelings of impatience and frustration, perception of being overloaded, reports of coping actions taken, and performance deficits on a standardized cognitive task. Overload stress has important implications for employee health. Previous research has demonstrated a relationship between overload stress and heavier smoking, hypertension and increased heart rate. The proposed project extends previous studies of overload stress by conceptualizing the problem as one of task interruption and by incorporating measures of actual job demands along with employees' evaluations of these demands.
| Kirmeyer, S L (1988) Coping with competing demands: interruption and the type A pattern. J Appl Psychol 73:621-9 |
