Can Proactive Behavior Reduce Job Strain?: Testing Feedback Seeking's Direct and Indirect Associations Using Two Types of Human Service Case Managers

Background and Purpose:  Job strain is universally acknowledged as both pervasive and problematic.  Occupational health scholars assert that reducing job strain in challenging and stressful workplace settings, like human services, requires work-related self-regulation.  Self-regulation is a cyclical goal-focused process comprised of three strain-reducing stages.  According to action regulation theory, proactive feedback seeking is central to advancing goal attainment across all three self-regulatory stages.  Stage 1:  feedback sought facilitates goal realization by directing mental activity towards hierarchically arranging work goals which in turn lowers job strain.  Stage 2:  feedback sought (and received) decreases job strain and furthers goal achievement by anticipating new learning and skill development which strengthens prospective competency or mastery beliefs.  Stage 3:  feedback sought (and received) advances goal attainment and reduces job strain by pursuing information on the size and directionality of goal-performance gaps, and the proper adjustments of subsequent work effort and strategies.  To date, no known published empirical studies have assessed feedback seeking’s direct or indirect relationship with job strain.  The present study addresses this gap in the social work research literature: 

H₁:  a negative correlation between feedback seeking and job strain (stage 1);

H₂:  feedback received fully mediates the feedback seeking-job strain association (stage 2);

H₃:  a positive two-way seeking-receiving feedback interaction on job strain (stage 3).

Methods:  Nine hundred and sixty-one case managers from 12 county-based child welfare and public assistance agencies across New York State were surveyed (66 % response rate).  Cronbach’s alphas and individual factor loadings achieved recommended levels.  Confirmatory factor analysis using maximum-likelihood estimation in AMOS 18.0 confirmed discriminant validity between the study's measures.  Procedures by Baron and Kenny (mediator analysis), and Aiken and West (moderator analysis) were used to test hypotheses 2 and 3.  Finally, measurement invariance (configual and metric) was established and no violations of OLS regression were noted. 

Results:  Support was observed for all three hypotheses.  Feedback seeking (r = -0.08, p < 0.05) was significantly correlated with job strain (hypothesis 1).  Baron and Kenny’s procedures for establishing mediation were consistent with receiving feedback’s role as a mediating variable (hypothesis 2).  A significant Sobel test statistic (Sobel statistic = -4.90, p < 0.05) also confirmed the construct’s intervening role.  As for hypothesis 3, the two-way seeking-receiving feedback interaction (β = -0.08, p< 0.05) also was significant.  Jointly, the two feedback variables explained 15% of the variance in job strain.

Conclusion and Implications:  Data from the present study are the first known empirical findings to report a main, mediated, and moderated effect for feedback seeking on job strain.  Empirical results indicate that human service agencies interested in reducing job strain via self-regulation must take into account feedback seeking’s complex association with receiving feedback.  Misunderstandings can obstruct two of self-regulation’s three stages.  Coupling the source (e.g., supervisor, peers, clients) of feedback sought and received with its most relevant self-regulatory stage is one area for future research.  Since supervisors evaluate case manager performance, seeking and receiving their feedback should, for example, have its strongest relationship with self-regulation’s final stage.