Hardiness, health care claims, absenteeism and burnout: A prospective study of direct and moderating effects

Hardiness (composed of control, commitment and challenge dimensions) has been presented as a personality orientation that helps people cope with stressors and stress in ways that minimize the potentially debilitating effects of life change. This two year longitudinal study examined the direct and moderating effects of hardiness on stressor/illness and stressor/stress relationships. The effects of Time 1 stressors, stress and illness on Time 2 hardiness were also examined. Survey and archival data were collected from a heterogenous sample of employees (n = 1476) who worked for an insurance and a manufacturing company. Variables were operationalized as follows: Episodic stressors as life and work events; Chronic stressors as life and work conditions; Stress as job satisfaction, job tensions, quality of life, strain, positive affect, and negative affect; Illness as burnout, health care claims, and absenteeism data; and Hardiness as Kobasa's second and third generation instruments.; Several findings resulted from correlation and multiple regression analyses: (1) stressors directly impact burnout, illness and absenteeism; (2) stress mediates significant stressor/burnout and stressor/absenteeism relationships; (3) life and work conditions are more strongly related to stress than are events, (4) hardiness demonstrates significant main effects on burnout but not on health care claims or on absenteeism, (5) hardiness directly effects stress, (6) hardiness does not moderate stressor/outcome or stressor/stress relationships, (7) stress directly effects hardiness and mediates the effects of stressors on hardiness, (8) hardiness is relatively stable over time, and (9) prior hardiness is the best predictor of future hardiness. All relationships were in the hypothesized directions.; The study suggests that the hardiness construct provides a powerful and viable explanation of human interactions with stressors and stress, but that psychometric difficulties hamper its use. When more effectively operationalized, hardiness may have the potential to contribute to our understanding of physical and psychological illness prevention, hardiness development, individual learning, and hardiness enhancing organizational structures.