Rationale: The overall objectives of this research were to study the relationships between the transfer from higher education to working life for psychologists and social workers. We were interested in early career experiences of emotional demands, ability to influence work, and professional isolation. Finally, we expected psychological flexibility to be an important buffer in the performance of human services work and therefore investigated its potential moderating effect.
Method: A postal survey was sent to 5213 psychologists and social workers in Sweden who had graduated within three years of the spring of 2017. There were 2514 respondents, and after exclusion criteria, a final sample consisted of 2224 participants (642 psychologists; 1582 social workers). The gender distribution shows that substantially fewer men participated.
Results: The results of hierarchical multiple regressions with emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue and cognitive weariness as outcome variables explained 34.5% and 35% respectively. Significant main effects were found for emotional demands, influence, professional isolation and work-related psychological flexibility (-.15 (p<.001) for emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue respective -.27 (p<.001) for cognitive weariness); there was no significant effect for age and profession or any interaction terms.
In a cluster analysis derived from perceived influence, professional isolation, and most recent transition, work-related psychological flexibility is one of the constructs which could distinguish between the different clusters.
Implications: Our preliminary results show that work-related psychological flexibility affects emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue and cognitive weariness. By increasing psychological flexibility, we can decrease emotional exhaustion, and in turn buffer against work-related stress.
2018.