Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Stress
Conditions
Keywords
Mindfulness, Physical exercise, Salivary Immunoglobulin A, Recovery strategy from stress
Brief summary
The objective of this research project is to examine if including mindfulness meditation or physical exercise at lunch break improve workers' recovery from work stress. Therefore, 72 workers included either mindfulness meditation or physical exercise during their lunchbreaks for a month in order to find out if these recovery strategies have more favorable outcomes than usually spent lunch breaks concerning: a) psychological detachment, b) perceived stress, c) general health, d) burnout, e) fatigue, f) quality of sleep, g) cortisol awakening response and h) immunocompetence.
Detailed description
The investigators conduct an intervention study in a sample of 72 knowledge-workers, who engaged in mindfulness meditation or physical activities for five weeks. They performed from 15 to 30 minutes during their lunch breaks. The investigators randomly assigned participants to three experimental conditions: 1) mindfulness meditation, 2) physical activity, 3) control group (lunch break as usual). Online questionnaires before and after intervention assessed long term changes regarding recovery processes, perceived stress, health, mindfulness and burnout. For daily changes, a mobile application was developed to assess changes once per day immediately after work. The investigators also collect saliva samples to map cortisol and immunoglobulin A excretion across the intervention period. The investigators had two follow-up measures one and six months after the intervention.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALMindfulness meditation
Guided mindfulness meditation focused on breath sensations, thoughts and emotions.
BEHAVIORALPhysical exercise
Cardio exercise at gym like rowing, eliptical, cycling, or running outside.
Sponsors
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Universidad de Zaragoza
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
FACTORIAL
Primary purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Knowledge-workers of an specific company with similar stress level.
Exclusion criteria
* Serious illness * Regular meditation * Regular physical exercise
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire of Levenstein | 8 months | Validation of the Spanish version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire of Levenstein et al. (1993). It is a scale to measure stress in psychosomatic disorders. It consists of 30 items, with Likert responses from 1(almost never) to 4 (almost always). The Spanish version has 6 factors: Harrassment-social acceptance, Overload, Irritability-tension-fatigue, Energy-Joy, Fear-anxiety, Self-realization-satisfaction. The higher score, the higher perceived stress. |
| Recovery Experience Questionnaire (Sonnentag et al., 2007) | 8 months | Recovery Experience Questionnaire (Sonnentag et al. 2007) is a measure for assessing recuperation from work. It has 16 items divided into four subscales: psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery and control. Each subscale has 4 items. Every items has a 5-point scale from 1 (I do not agree al all) to 5 (I fully agree). Higher scores indicates a higher degree of recovery from work stress. |
| Spanish version of the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg et al., 1997) | 8 months | Short version of General Health questionnaire. It has 12 items divided into three subscales: Stress, Coping strategies and Self-steem. Every item has a Likert scale to answer from 0 to 3. Higher scores indicates worse general health. |
| Salivary Immunoglobulin A | 1 months | Level changes from Baseline to 1 month follow-up. Samples were collected in Salivettes -trademark- (a plastic tube with a swab) twice a day: in the morning (round 7am) and after work (round 7pm). There were collected two Salivettes every of the three moment of measuring (pretest, postest and 1 month follow-up). That means there were taken 6 tubes for every participant. |
Countries
Spain
Outcome results
None listed