Background Occupational stress is common in occupational groups. Long-term exposure to excessive occupational stress can lead to a series of physical and mental disorders and reduce the life quality of workers. Miners are a special occupational group, and their quality of life is closely linked to industrial safety.
Objective In this study, workers of a copper-nickel mine in Xinjiang are surveyed by questionnaires to understand the levels of occupational stress and to explore the relationship between occupational stress and quality of life.
Methods By using stratified cluster sampling, copper-nickle miners, who were registered to the human resource department of the industry with more than one year of service to current job, were selected from three main production sectors (mining, ore dressing, and smelting) from June 2016 to September 2017, and asked to complete questionnaires of general information, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI), and the Mos 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Rank sum test, chi-square test, and multiple linear regression were used for statistical analysis.
Results A total of 1 350 questionnaires were sent out and 1 254 valid questionnaires were returned (92.89%). There were 1 116 male (89.0%) and 138 female (11.0%) copper-nickel miners, with an average age of (33.02±9.52) years. The percentage of the miners suffering from occupational stress was 40.43%, and there were statistically significant differences in the percentage among miners of different gender, age, education, monthly income, and operating unit groups (P < 0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis showed that gender, educational level, monthly income, type of work, and ERI had a comprehensive impact on the quality of life of the miners (F=42.878, P < 0.01, R2=0.194). Specifically, the quality of life of men was higher than that of women (b=-20.354, 95% CI=-39.353--1.355), higher monthly income was associated with better quality of life of the miners (b=0.010, 95% CI=0.004-0.017), and higher education level and occupational stress were associated with lower quality of life of the miners (b=-9.950, 95% CI=-17.117--2.784; b=-198.320, 95% CI=-225.801--170.839).
Conclusion Copper-nickel miners generally experience occupational stress, and occupational stress is a risk factor for reduced quality of life in this worker group.
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