A Meta-Analysis of the Influential Factors in Job Stress among Islamic Azad University Staff

Undoubtedly, job stress plays a key role in the decline and burnout of the human resources in organizations. One problem associated with our contemporary modern life is the appearance of job stress in terms of the work environment. Meta-analysis creates a better understanding of the similarities and dissimilarities of the previous studies conducted in this field and hence allows for a more comprehensive perspective on the research subject. In the present study, the previous studies on the job stress have been classified in terms of such criteria as statistical society, the involved variables, and type of job, and finally 12 studies have been selected as the statistical society of the research. In our proposed meta-analysis, for investigation of the magnitude of the effect of the independent variables on the job stress, the criteria for the effect size of coefficients r and d of Cohen have been used. Our findings show that the variables for age (d = 0.49), gender (d = 0.56), and job experience (d = 0.35) have an intermediate importance in the amount of job stress. Besides, variables for organizational atmosphere (d = 0.62), organizational justice (d = 0.98), work ethic (d = 0.95), and job satisfaction (d = 0.8), each of which used in a separate study, have great importance in determination of the amount of job stress.