Occupational stress among civil pilots in eastern China

Objective To investigate the characteristics and influencing factors of occupational stress among civil pilots.Methods A self-administered survey with a self-designed brief questionnaire on occupational stress was conducted among 4 582 civil pilots working in eastern China when they having routine annual physical examination between July and December 2014.Results Of the civil pilots,72.4% reported job demand-control (JDC) stress and 92.2% reported effort-reward imbalance (ERI) stress.The results of logistic regression analysis revealed that main influencing factors of JDC stress included aged over 50 years (odds ratioOR=1.816),having an average flight time of more than 80 hours per month (OR=2.562),having an average night flight time of more than 50 hours per month (OR=1.803),with irregular mealtime (OR=1.351),and having physical exercise frequently (OR=0.782);whereas the major impacting factors of ERI were having an average flight time of more than 80 hours (OR=2.550),non-smoking (OR=1.396),and having a longer time of long-distance flight time of over 50 hours per month (OR=0.589);sleeping time and employed by different flight companies also showed influences on ERI among the civil pilots.Conclusion High occupational stress exits and decreasing flight time and promoting healthy life behavior could alleviate the stress among civil pilots in China.