Stress Level Along Professional Groups and Educational Indicators

There are different types of stressors. Eustress is positive stress that is motivating and improves one’s performance while distress is negative stress that causes anxiety, decreases one’s performance and can lead to mental and physical problems (Hurrelmann 2010).

Stressors can be stressful life events as well as chronic strain (e.g. familial and job strain). A central area of human life in which both positive and negative stress can affect a person’s health over a long period of time is the working world (Siegrist 1996). Stressors at work can be the employment relationship (e.g. temporary contracts, more than one employer), the positioning and amount of working hours (e.g. work at weekends) and the workplace (e.g. outside the private area) (Garhammer 2003).

The contribution describes the stress level along professional groups and educational indicators. Depending on the level of education, people select themselves in professions with different health chances and risks. While a higher level of education is associated with occupational stress and a lack of physical activity of 'office workers', professions that don’t require a degree are associated with noise and pollution, as well as accident risks and health-related shift work (Beyer 2002). The contribution deals with the question whether jobs that require or jobs that don’t require a higher level of education are generally characterized by greater stress levels by using data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS[1]; starting cohorts 6: Adults (SC6)).

[1] NEPS collects longitudinal data on education processes and competency developments in Germany.