CONGRUENCE AS A PREDICTOR OF OCCUPATIONAL STRESS

This study examined the relation among nine measures of Holland's conc ept of congruence and the relation of these measures and occupational stress. Holland's Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1985b) and the Occupa tional Stress Inventory (Osipow & Spokane, 1987) were administered to 154 fully employed adults. Two correlated factors accounted for the pa ttern of correlations among the congruence measures. The first factor was defined by measures which made use of the hexagonal arrangement of types and the second was based simply on discrepancies between the le tters representing the person's type and the job environment. A number of markers for the second factor were related to stress and strain. I achan's M index (Iachan, 1984, 1990) was the best predictor, accountin g for 7% of variance on total stress scores and 9% of variance on tota l strain scores. It is suggested that the relation between congruence and stress, like the relation between congruence and job satisfaction (Spokane, 1985), is significant but rather small and dependent on the measure of congruence used. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.