Stress Management and Physical Activity in the Workplace. A Review of Assessment Tools

Abstract

Research on physical activity to improve stress management in the workplace is attracting a lot of interest. However, these studies are multidisciplinary and very heterogeneous, which complicates the comparison of results. Moreover, the study design is difficult due to the large number of tools available to assess perceived stress. The aim of this paper is to identify the most popular stress assessment tools in these studies, which are flexible and useful for future research. For that purpose, a literature review was conducted to identify the studies that analyze perceived stress (or similar variables) in the workplace and include the effect of physical activity since 2010. The results show that the Perceived Stress Scale and the Need for Recovery are the most popular measures at the moment because of their easy adaptation and implementation in all studies. Finally, it seems necessary to combine psychological and physiological stress variables to observe the effect that different types of physical activity have on stress management. Acknowledgments: This study has been funded by Cátedra Real Madrid-Universidad Europea (2016/RM03).