Congruence as a predictor of occupational stress

Abstract

[Abstract]: This study examined the relation among nine measures of Holland's concept of congruence and the relation of these measures and occupational stress. Holland's Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1985b) and the Occupational Stress Inventory (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) were administered to 154 fully-employed adults. Two correlated factors accounted for the pattern of correlations among the congruence measures. The first factor was defined by measures which made use of the hexagonal arrangement of types and the second was based simply on discrepancies between the letters representing the person's type and the job environment. A number of markers for the second factor were related to stress and strain. Iachan's M index (Iachan, 1984;1990) was the best predictor, accounting for seven percent of variance on total stress scores and nine percent of variance on total strain scores. It is suggested that the relation between congruence and stress, like the relation between congruence and job satisfaction (Spokane, 1985), is significant but rather small and dependent on the measure of congruence used.