Authors’ response

Excerpt

Work-related stress is a complex phenomenon. Previous studies showed that several job stressors (e.g., workload, role ambiguity) are positively associated with psychophysical strain, and that job resources (e.g., job autonomy, social support) may buffer this relationship (Ganster & Rosen, 2013). However, given this complexity, many previous studies in the literature investigated the relationship between a specific job stressor and a single biomarker of stress at a time, usually controlling for the effect of possible confounders, such as gender, age or BMI. This is a common approach in applied research, since studies that consider physiological measures usually involve small samples. Indeed, researchers face considerable costs, from both a time/logistic and economic standpoint, in order to enroll study participants, collect data, and analyze blood samples. Therefore, studies necessarily focus on simple models, whereas bigger samples are needed, in order to investigate more complex relationships (e.g., multiple mediators models). …