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Human Relations, Vol. 60, No. 8, 1181-1209 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726707081660

Participants' accounts of a stress management intervention

Raymond Randall

Department of Psychology at the University of Leicester, rjr15{at}le.ac.uk

Tom Cox

University of Nottingham, tom.cox{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Amanda Griffiths

University of Nottingham, amanda.griffiths{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Organizational-level stress management interventions are usually evaluated using quasi-experimental methods. In order to test intervention effectiveness, such methods examine the outcomes of between-group differences in intervention exposure: participants are rarely asked about their experiences of the intervention. However, this approach has been criticized because it provides little or no information about why interventions succeed or fail. The aim of this study was to examine whether an analysis of participants' narratives of what had happened during an organizational-level intervention might prove useful during evaluation. Nurses working in a UK hospital (n = 26) who had received an intervention to help them balance their administrative and clinical workloads, provided information about their experiences of it, and how these experiences were related to the effectiveness of the intervention. Template analysis of the data in their narratives identified codes relating to: i) intervention contexts (both pre-intervention and during the intervention); ii) implementation processes (including how participants made use of the intervention); and iii) participants' perceptions of the intervention's impact. The results indicated that participants' accounts provided information that is not captured by the dominant evaluation paradigm. Specifically, these data can i) help organizations to make better use of interventions, and ii) enhance research into the links between intervention processes, contexts and outcomes.

Key Words: change • healthcare organizations • participation and workplace democracy • stress • the work environment

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