Do We Practice What We Preach? A Mixed Methods Study of Stress in Stress Experts: Implications for Transfer of Awareness and Learning.

Abstract

This two-phased, mixed methods study develops our understanding of how knowledge, education and awareness about workplace health phenomena is utilized by experts and applied to their own working lives, through a study that explores how stress is transferred and applied in the management of one's own experience of stress. Phase one gained quantitative data from a sample of 118 stress experts across 18 countries, and phase two used qualitative data from life histories interviews and focus groups with 14 stress experts who had also participated in Phase 1. Phase one found that stress experts experience less occupational stress than a norm group. The number of years experts have been researching stress does not influence the stress-wellbeing relationship. Instead, the greater the belief in their expertise influence, the better their wellbeing, and this effect is independent of the stressors they experience. Phase two built sequentially on this to explore experts' reflections regarding the management of their own stress and the influence of their expert knowledge. Narrative thematic analysis was undertaken to provide discursive insights that captured appraisal of learning and framing of stress experiences. We provide conceptual and practical contributions to further our understanding about how expert status in health impacts outcomes and how this wider learning has theoretical and practical impacts. We show how stress beliefs impact upon behaviors, emotions and cognition. We conclude that awareness and knowledge in itself is not always powerful enough to shape outcomes, and our data evidences how spirals of learning interact with environment and context over time through rich narratives that chart reflection on the development and maintenance of expert status.