Relationships between psychosocial work environmental factors, personality, physical work demands and workload in a group of Swedish dentists.

The aim of the study was to investigate, in a group of 77 Swedish dentists (36 males, 41 females) working in dental clinics, possible effects of psychosocial work environmental factors, personality traits, and social desirability tendencies on their reporting of their workload and of the physical demands placed on them. Participants were given questionnaires for assessing their workload, the physical and psychosocial demands of their job, their social support at work, and their control over their work situation, using a 10-cm visual analogue scale (V.A.S.). The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) was also given to assess neuroticism and extraversion and the Marlowe-Crown SD-scale to measure tendencies to answer questions in a socially desirable manner. As in two earlier studies of ours, very high assessments were made of workload, physical work demands and social support. Higher assessments of workload and of physical work demands were found in those assessing the psychosocial work demands placed on them to be higher. Those assessing the work load of their job as higher also considered themselves to have less control over their work situation and were less extraverted. Despite these dentists perceiving themselves as being faced with a stressful work situation involving a high workload, strong physical and psychosocial demands being placed on them and their having a low degree of control over their work situation, the high degree of social support they experienced may have made their work situation less stressful.