Incidence and types of occupational role stress among university research administrators

University research administrators (URAs) are key higher education employees who traditionally are responsible for facilitating the research of the institutions they serve and, increasingly, for ensuring institutional compliance with policies and regulations associated with federal funding. Hansen and Moreland (2004) describe the URA balancing between facilitation and compliance demands as being Janus-faced. Like most professions balancing multiple work demands, research administration is stressful (Shambrook, 2007). However, there is a lack of data on the incidence and types of occupational stress among these Janus-faced URAs. This study explored the types of stressors prevalent in the self-reports of URAs and examined whether or not the degree or type of role stress was influenced by: (a) affiliation of their office unit within their institution, or (b) their type of URA. Randomly selected members of the National Council of University Research Administration (NCURA) were invited via e-mail to participate in an on-line survey. The Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised (OSI-R) Occupational Roles Questionnaire (ORQ) was administered with additional questions regarding the respondents' professional characteristics. The ORQ consists of six scales including: role overload (RO), role insufficiency (RI), role ambiguity (RA), role boundary (RB), responsibility (R), and physical environment (PE) (Osipow, 1998). PE data was not evaluated. The study revealed that: the two types of occupational stressors that were most prevalent and above the average range, were RA and RO; RA was at a level indicating a strong probability of maladaptive stress and/or debilitating strain and; RO was at the level indicating mild levels of stress and/or debilitating strain. Also, the results showed that the types of URAs in the sample population, their office's organizational affiliation, and years of experience did not influence the type or incidence of the occupational stressors reported. Overall, the degree of occupational stress among URAs is at a level which requires intervention from their institutions and the researcher recommends both further assessment and intervention. Areas for further research include examination of the possible interventions of peer review, self-evaluation and institution size as a factor in occupational stress prevalence.