Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Vol 56, 245-252

Risk factors for psychological stress among international business travellers

J Striker, RS Luippold, L Nagy, B Liese, C Bigelow and KA Mundt
Health Services Department, World Bank, Washington, DC 20433, USA.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated sources of self reported psychological stress among international business travellers at the World Bank, following up on a previous study showing that travellers submitted more insurance claims for psychological disorders. Hypotheses were that work, personal, family, and health concerns, as well as time zone travel, contribute to travel stress. METHODS: A travel survey was developed from focus groups and consisted of questions about these potential sources of travel stress. Surveys were sent to a random sample of staff, stratified by number of travel missions, age range, and sex. Canonical correlation analyses estimated the association between key survey items on sources of stress and two measures of travel stress. RESULTS: 498 staff completed the survey. More than a third reported high to very high travel stress. Correlations between predictors and travel stress showed that social and emotional concerns (such as impact of travel on family and sense of isolation) contributed the most to such stress, followed by health concerns, and workload upon return from travel. Surprisingly, time zone travel did not contribute to the self reported stress of these travellers. There were few modifiers of stress, although respondents suggested that a day of rest after travel and reduced workloads would help. CONCLUSIONS: The current study confirms clinical impressions about several correlates of travel stress. Similar research with travellers in other organisations could help to determine whether the findings from this study are valid and what measures can be taken to reduce the psychological health risks to travellers.

Copyright © 1999 Occupational and Environmental Medicine
CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Gustafson, P. (2006). Work-related travel, gender and family obligations. Work Employment Society 20: 513-530 [Abstract]  
• Patel, D., Easmon, C., Seed, P., Dow, C., Snashall, D. (2006). Morbidity in expatriates--a prospective cohort study. Occup Med (Lond) 56: 345-352 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Fleck, S., Jager, H., Zeeb, H. (2006). Travel and health status: a survey follow-up study. Eur J Public Health 16: 96-100 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Tsutsumi, A., Izutsu, T., Sakami, S., Miyazaki, T., Wakai, S. (2005). Long-term influence of working abroad on returneesi mental health. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 125: 281-286 [Abstract]  
• Gehring, T. M., Widmer, J., Banziger, O., Marti, D. (2002). Quality of Work and Need for Supervision among Physicians and Nurses of a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Clin Child Psychol Psychiatry 7: 595-608 [Abstract]  
• Espino, C M, Sundstrom, S M, Frick, H L, Jacobs, M, Peters, M (2002). International business travel: impact on families and travellers. Occup. Environ. Med. 59: 309-322 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Dimberg, L A, Striker, J, Nordanlycke-Yoo, C, Nagy, L, Mundt, K A, Sulsky, S I (2002). Mental health insurance claims among spouses of frequent business travellers. Occup. Environ. Med. 59: 175-181 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Penson, R. T., Dignan, F. L., Canellos, G. P., Picard, C. L., Lynch, T. J. Jr. (2000). Burnout: Caring for the Caregivers. The Oncologist 5: 425-434 [Abstract] [Full Text]