Kyoung-Ok Park, PhD, Department of Health Education, Ewha Womans University, Daehyun-dong #11-1 Soedaemoon-gu, Seoul, 120-750, South Korea, 82194686614, kopark0822@hotmail.com

It is well documented that perceived stress is affected by not only physical working environments but also psychosocial working conditions although more research interest has been focused on psychosocial working conditions than on physical environments. The purpose of this study was to identify the physical working environments and psychosocial working conditions affecting manufacturing factory workers' perceived stress through a nationwide worksite health status survey conducted by Korean Occupational Safety and Health Association. A stratified random sampling method was used in this study considering region, business type, and factory size. A total of 12,989 factory workers employed in the 1,500 companies were randomly selected based on the Korean business index. Direct interview survey was conducted with the structured interview script and questionnaire by the interviewers trained before. The interview questionnaire included perceived psychological stress, physical working environments, perceived job demands, job control, social support at work, health status, and health behaviors. The collected responses were computerized in SPSS statistical software and higher-order regression analysis was used in this study. The respondents' average age was 33.7 years old and 68% of them were men. Noise, air pollution, and poor ventilation were serious physical working environments affecting perceived. Short duration of work, heavy workload, low social support, heavy noise, poor ventilation, and woman were significant characteristics associated with high perceived stress symptoms. Thus, physical environments as well as psychosocial conditions in worksite should be monitored and controlled for factory workers' mental well-being.

Learning Objectives:

• -To understand general physical working environments in Korean manufacturing factories
• -To understand general psychosocial working conditions in Korean manufacturing factories
• -To identify the significant physical and psychological working factors associated with perceived stress symptoms among manual factory workers

Keywords: Workplace Stressors, Asian and Pacific Islander

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.