The technostress questionnaire: a pilot study

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICT) represent one of the major drivers of economic growth and collective evolution, with positive repercussions on the world of labor. Despite several benefits, technology is substantially altering the nature and organization of work, posing possible psychosocial, organizational and ergonomic risks as outlined by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and current strategic documents of the European Commission. The novel COVID-19 pandemic has further accentuated the burden of the use of ICT, emphasizing the importance of occupational safety and health practices. Nevertheless, the topic of digital stress is not yet carefully considered in the Italian context. The purpose of this exploratory study is to create a new psychometric tool aimed at investigating the key dimensions of technostress. In particular, the psychometric properties of each scale (reliability and dimensionality) were preliminarily analyzed. The spread of ICT modifies the characteristics of traditional stressors (e.g. job demands) while contributing to the spread of new stressors (e.g. privacy and pervasiveness), leading to what is called "technostress". Since the first definition of technostress introduced by Brod (1984), the construct has been operationalized according to different perspectives and is now consensually recognized as a major threat to the health of workers. For the realization of the items and the identification of the areas of investigation, the concepts of stress, work-related stress and technostress were examined together with the main theoretical models and pre-existing psychometric tools. The items belonging to each dimension were then generated according to a deductive path. The qualitative analyses regarding content validity led to a total of 80 items and 15 scales (usefulness/usability, reliability, technology self-efficacy, role, multitasking, job control, job demands, pace of change, pervasiveness/work- life balance, privacy/monitoring, employability, supervisor support, colleague support, involvement and training) which were administered to a sample of 235 subjects. Reliability analyses and exploratory factor analyses (EFA) (principal axis factoring (PAF) with suppression of factor loadings below 0.30 and promax rotation) were performed for each scale. The internal consistency analyses showed values ranging from fairly good (α = 0.60) to excellent (α = 0.88) depending on the scale, providing encouraging results for a future in-depth analysis of the instrument. The exploratory factor analyses provided good initial results, yielding to a two-factor solution only in the case of the “multitasking” scale. Given the exploratory nature of the study, the validation process was limited to the analysis of reliability and dimensionality. Future studies will need to further analyze the structure of the scales in order to identify which model best represents the constructs, using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) methods to evaluate the goodness of this version. The practical implications concern the creation of specific policies at company, sectoral and national level with a focus on an advanced workplace risk assessment. Once validated, the questionnaire could be used for tailor-made organizational diagnoses and targeted interventions.