Work stress among Information Technology professionals in Sri Lanka

Introduction This study was conducted to detennine the prevalence of psychological distress, to describe the work stress and selected factors associated with it and coping strategies of stress among Information Technology professionals in the private sector of Sri Lanka. Methodology A descriptive cross sectional srudy was carried out to 01eet these objectives. The selection of the sample was done using cluster sampling with probability proportionate to size. IT professionals in IT organizations (private sector) who have work experience more than one year at present station were included as study subjects. The study instrument which was a self administered questionnaire (developed as an elecu·onic form with HTML) con­ sisted of four pans; a validated version of a 30 item general health questionnaire (30 GHQ), a questionnaire on socio-demographic and work related factors, a work stress assessment questionnaire and a questionnaire on coping strategies. Results . The majority of participants were of a younger age group with a mean age of 30 years and Sinhalese. Mal.e pre­ ponderance was observed. Tbe proportion of unmarried participants was higher. There were 43% of IT graduates, 20% of non-IT graduates making the bulk of the srudy sample. A higher proportion (57%) of participants were in the Rs. 20,000 45,000 monthly income categories. It was observed that 55% of participants were doing extra duty of more than five hours per week. Only 5% of participants were paid for extra duty. The prevalence of psy­ chological distress (GHQ score 2:: 6) among IT professionals was 41%.Excessive workload, Jack of rewards, lack of opportunity to career development and organizational decision regarding deadlines were main stressors for majority of participants in the study group. There is a statistically significant (p<0.001) association between psy­ chological distress and work stress. Factors associated with high level of work stress were age, marital status, employment status of spouse, health problems, years of service at present organization, extra-work hours and weekend duty. Higher proportion of participants had adopted problem focused hannless coping strategies to overcome stress. Conclusions Psychological distress and work stress among It professionals should be recognised as a priority health problem. Organization culture should be more worker friendly and stress management training programs should be con­ ducted at organizational level to encourage effective coping strategies to overcome stress specially for the benefit of IT professionals who had adopted harmful stress coping methods.


Introduction
This study was conducted to detennine the prevalence of psychological distress, to describe the work stress and selected factors associated with it and coping strategies of stress among Information Technology professionals in the private sector of Sri Lanka. Methodology A descriptive cross sectional srudy was carried out to 01eet these objectives. The selection of the sample was done using cluster sampling with probability proportionate to size. IT professionals in IT organizations (private sector) who have work experience more than one year at present station were included as study subjects. The study instrument which was a self administered questionnaire (developed as an elecu·onic form with HTML) con sisted of four pans; a validated version of a 30 item general health questionnaire (30 GHQ), a questionnaire on socio-demographic and work related factors, a work stress assessment questionnaire and a questionnaire on coping strategies. Results

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The majority of participants were of a younger age group with a mean age of 30 years and Sinhalese. Mal. e pre ponderance was observed. Tbe proportion of unmarried participants was higher. There were 43% of IT graduates, 20% of non-IT graduates making the bulk of the srudy sample. A higher proportion (57%) of participants were in the Rs. 20,000 -45,000 monthly income categories. It was observed that 55% of participants were doing extra duty of more than five hours per week. Only 5% of participants were paid for extra duty. The prevalence of psy chological distress (GHQ score 2:: 6) among IT professionals was 41%.Excessive workload, Jack of rewards, lack of opportunity to career development and organizational decision regarding deadlines were main stressors for majority of participants in the study group. There is a statistically significant (p<0.001) association between psy chological distress and work stress. Factors associated with high level of work stress were age, marital status, employment status of spouse, health problems, years of service at present organization, extra-work hours and weekend duty. Higher proportion of participants had adopted problem focused hannless coping strategies to overcome stress.

Conclusions
Psychological distress and work stress among It professionals should be recognised as a priority health problem. Organization culture should be more worker friendly and stress management training programs should be con ducted at organizational level to encourage effective coping strategies to overcome stress specially for the benefit of IT professionals who had adopted harmful stress coping methods. Key words psychological distress, work stress, IT Professionals. private sector lntroduclion Information Technology (IT) is a comparatively new industry which rapidly changes with advancing mod ern technology. This industry has accommodated a rapidly expanding young workforce. IT is a profession which maximally utilizes the employees' knowledge. creativity and innovativeness. Most of the professional who work in-this industry tend to work Jong hours under tension to meet deadlines. Thus employees are placed at an immense pressure of work to achieve higher targets, keeping up their innovativeness and working in a competjtive environment.
They communicate through emails and e-chatting. At the end of the day, or most of the time early morning of next �. they are dropped at home by an office vehicle, making their sedentary life worse. Technology has also allowed the office to slowly creep into the personal lives of workers. Employees now have laptops, voice niail and email that they can access from home. This has encouraged people to do additional work at home and to constantly stay in touch with the office, making the stress continuous.
An employee who spent much more time at his/her work place has limited time to communicate with his/ber spouse, children and other relatives. Overwork is causing a strain of families and relationships as it robs people's Lime, energy and attention needed to maintain healthy relationships with partners and children. When the spouse is also working the family conflict become worse. Children suffer when their parents work long hours. Deficiency in parental are results in behavioural, cognitive and emotional problems among children.
This study was conducted to meet following objectives. General Objective To determ. ine the prevalence of psychological distress, to describe the work stress, selected factors associated with it and coping strategies adopted by Information Technology (IT) Professionals in the private sector of Sri Lanka.
Specific Objectives • to describe the socio-demographic characteristics of the study sample. • to determine the prevalence of psychological dis tress among IT Professionals. • to describe the work stress and selected factors associated with it among IT professionals. • to describe the coping strategies adapted by IT professionals Lo overcome stress

Methodology
A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at IT organizations (private sector) in Sri Lanka within a period of eight weeks starting from late July, 2006. Since the data collecting instrument was an emailed electronic questionnaire (self administered), the study was conducted covering the entire country as there was no restriction in accessi bility.  To minimize bias associated with using a clus-1er sampling technique, a design effect was incorporated. The sample size was multiplied by the tlesign effect of 1.5. Therefore the sam ple size was 576.Considering 15% non re sponse rate. sample size was 663. 3. The cluster size was the smallest number of IT professionals in lhe list working in an institute. For this study the cluster size was determined as 30 and !he number of clusters required was 663/30 = 22. Since all IT professional popula tion is 27 .000 lhe cluster interval was 27,000/22 = 1227. 4. To define institUlion where the first cluster would be drawn, a random number was ob tained between 1 and lhe sampling interval (1227) by using random number table.

The sampling interval was added repeatedly LO
the original random number to locate additional clusters up to the required total of 22. Thus more than one cluster was allocated to insliru tions with large IT workforce.

Stage II-Selecting individuals within each clus1er
The required number of IT professionals was se lected by systematic sampling method as described below.

Journal of the Community Physicia11s of Sri IAnka
I. According to the location of clusters, a list of selected institutions was prepared with their total number of IT professionals. The Head of the institution of each was contacted via e-mail and details of the eligible of IT professionals available in that institution was obtained. A person involved in producing IT related output as his primary job function and having more than one year work experience in the cu1Tent station were considered to be eligible to partici pate in the study. The e-mail address of each eligible IT professional in the selected institu tion was assigned a unique identification num ber. 2. Sampling interval was calculated by dividing the total number of IT professionals working in that institution by the required oumber of pro fessionals. 3. The first participant was selected within the first sampling interval by drawing a random number which was smaller than the sampling inter v al. 4. The ne)lt part�ipant was selected by adding the sampling interval to the first participant's iden tification number. 5. In this way, participants were selected until the required sample size was obtained from that inslirution. 6. Selected participants were not substituted for any reason. 7. Participants who failed to return the completed questionnaire were personally contacted by the Principal Investigator to collect data Stud. ,· instrument A self administered questionnaire was prepared to collect data. The investigator conducted uns1ruc tured inter v iews among eight IT professionals indi vidually before preparing the questionnaire. The· investigator realized that while the questionnaire was been more focused on stress at work place, in formation on family related stressors should also be gathered.
Part I -Questionnaire on socio-demographic data 11 consisted of brief questions to obtain personal information and information regarding families of IT professionals.
Part II -Questionnaire to determine psychological distress The item 30 version of General Health Question naire (GHQ), validated for Sri Lanka was used for this study to identify the state of anxiety, minor de pressive illness, and transient situational distur bances such as feeling of incompetence in coping

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and social dysfunction i.e. psychological distress. It was a self administered questionnaire which con sisted of thirty questions, each with four responses in which participants should mark only one re sponse. The first two responses were assigned a score of zero each, while the last two responses were assigned a score of one each (from left to right 0-0-1-1 ). The score of six or more marks was used to identify psychological distress.
Part Ill · Questionnaire on work stress and selected factors associated with it These questions were related to work and were con strocted, based on the information gathered during informal interviews with IT professionals and refer ring the literature. Several other job stress assess ment questionnaires were also referred to. Final questionnaire was done with Lhe help of psychia trists and managerial experts in IT sector. The work stress assessment questionnaire consisted of follow ing dimensions.

Job relared and organizational factors
Work overload, monotony, ambiguity, sho1t term deadlines, responsibility, relationship with co workers/superiors, Skills/knowledge, job insecurity, career development confidence in management. appreciation and satisfaction with work.

Physical environmental/actors
Availability of software/hardware tools, design/ posture of computer chairs and tables, air condition ing, work atmosphere, machine configuration, inter net failure etc. Each item was accompanied by five point score system rating scale. This section con sisted of two types of questions in order to collect more accurate infonnation. In one type of questions, response number one indicated no stress and fifth response indicated extreme stress. In the other type, response number one indicated extreme stress while fifth respon.se indicated no stress. While analyzing, one mark was allocated for "no stress" response and five marks were allocated for "extreme stress" re sponse.
Some questions were prepared to gather same information in different ways of questioning co improve the validity of the results. For analysis purposes, total scores were summarized according to the relative fr equency and cut off level was determined to categorize IT professionals into two work stress levels.

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Pan [V -Questionnaire on coping strategies There are two main methods of stress coping strate gies namely problem focused and emo1ion focused. Emotion focused stress coping method can be either harmful or harmless. Pan TV of the questionnaire administered to describe above coping Strategies practiced by the participants. The questionnaire contained two parts,

Part (a)
In this part of Lhe questionnaire. participants were requested to mark their usual stress coping method(s) in response to five pre-identified stress producing events for IT Professionals. By that, participants were categorized to two main groups; practicing problem focused, emotion focused su-ategy of stress coping.
This part of the questionnaire was used to asses the frequency of practicing two types of emotion focused method separately; five harmless (seeking emotional suppoit from f r iends/ relatives, listening to music, meditation, physical exercise, recreational activities) and six hru·mful (smoking, alcohol, using drugs like diazepam, and excessive eating/starving, keeping feelings to self and refuse to believe it happened) coping strategics were assessed among pa1ticipants. The responders were requested to indicate the fre quency of practicing each of these methods.

Data collection
Since TT professionals are more familiar with e Fonns, an electronic questionnaire was prepared with professional guidance; a special care was taken to minimize the writing descriptions, where almost all responses could be selectable with mouse. The e questionnaire was prepared using Adobe Acrobat forms and the collection of result was automated via return e-mail to the Principal Investigator. The re sults were automatically formatted to well-formed XML (eXtensible Markup Language) data which made storing and analysis easy.
It was also disclosed how the participant had been selected to be included in the study. Since partici pants were assigned a particular identification num ber, the name of the IT professional was not entered in the answer script.

Data analysis
The collected data via e-questionnaire and the ques tionnaire hosted on the web was converted to Excel format. The colleted data via MS Word doc and hard copy were manually entered Lo the Excel file.
The data analysis was done with SPSS-I I software package using personal computer. The cut off levels were determined as described above for stress levels and GHQ status. For the descriptive statistics, fr e quency distributions were generated and data were tabulated accordingly. Chi square test was used to analyze the qualitative data. A probability of< 0.05 was considered as significant.

Ethical considerations
Informed, written consent was obtained from each IT professional prior to send the questionnaire. The confidentiality of the information obtained, was ensured. Ethical clearance for the study was ob tained fr om the Ethical Review Committee, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. The approval to carry out the survey was obtained from the rele vant Head of the Institutions.

Results
The study was carried out among a sample of 663 Information Technology professionals who are currently employed in IT organizations in the pri vate sector. A total of 604 participants responded of the total of 663 giving a response rate of 91 %.

The socio-demographic characteristics
The majority (82%) of the IT professionals in the sample were less than 36 years old, Sinhalese and unmarried. Only 0.8% participants were more than 45 years old. Amoag the study sample, male pre ponderance was observed with a sex ratio of 2.6 (Male: Female). (Table 1). There were 43% IT graduates and 20% non IT graduates making the bulk of the study sample. The majoriiy of the IT professionals (57%) received an income between 20,000 to 45,000 rupees monthly.
Job categorization in the study population is given in Figure I. The distribution of job categories among the sample approximate I y matches the IT work force calegorization, in the IT work force sur vey 2005.
The prevalence of psychological distress among the study group was 41 %.

Work stress amon g IT Professionals
Work stress was measured by using various parame ters which were considered as sources of work stress (stressors) for IT professionals ( Table 2).
The work load was a stressor for approximately 51 % of study participants. Other main stress pro ducing events were lack of rewards, lack of oppor tunities for career developments, organizational decisions regarding deadlines and less appreciation in participati on in decision making, management decisions/enrolment decision, frequent interruption of work by management for new priorities and lack of access to all necessary information. Poor physical environment was a stressor for 31 % of participants.

Joumal oft/re Commu11ity Physicia11s of Sri La11ka Volume 12 December 2007
Factors associated with work stress With increasing age, the proportion of IT profes sionals who experience a higher stress was in creased. There is a statistically significant associa tion between work stress and age (Table 3). A higher proportion of married IT professionals in the sample (55.l %) were experiencing stress in comparison to the unmarried group (42.9%). Fur ther in 61.3% of participants who experience high level work stress, the spouses were also employed. This factor was also associations with work stress.
The participants' perceived level of quality care received by their children was assessed by request ing them to mention their feeling regarding the level of care received by the children. All 17 participants who felt that their child is not getting adequate care and attention were experiencing high work stress (100%).
The study participants who had frequent company with relatives/friends seemed to be experiencing less work stress than the other group. There was a statistically significant association between work stress and home conflicts.
With increasing level of monthly income and with increasing number of years of their service in the current organization, the proportion of participants in the "high stress" category was found to be high. The proportion (56.2%) of participant in the "high stress" category was higher among the group who worked more than five extra hours per day. There was a stepwise increase in the proportion of partici pants in the "high stress" category with increasing frequency of weekend duties.
There was a significant association between work su-ess and GHQ score 2:: 6 (psychologically dis tressed) indicating that those who are having high work stress levels are more prone to psychological distress ( Table 4).
The majority of IT professionals in the study sample were found to be practicing problem focused stress coping strategy to the given situation Tables 5-7).

Discussion
The study results revealed that the majority of the participants were in age group of 26 . 30 years with a mean age of 30 years. The IT industry in Sri Lanka· is still young compared to other fields of industry and at the same time it is expanding

Journal of the Community Physicians of Sri Lanka
rapidly. Young graduates and diploma holders en ter into this field 1 • This explains the distribution of the study sample.
The male preponderance (72%) at IT field can be due to the fact that, IT organization culture in the private sector which is more competitive, profit and target oriented, places more demand on the employee and ultimately lead them to work long hours. Finally it becomes a field where females are reluctant to choose as their career, because of inability to balance responsibilities at workplace and family. Furthermore. maternity leave policies in the private sector may not encourage females entering this field.
The majority of smdy sample was Sinhalese. The ethnic distribution was somewhat similar to that of the urban population accordiJtg to the Demographic and Health Survey in 2000 conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics, Ministry of Finance and Planning, Sri Lanka.
The majority (59%) of the study sample was unmar ried. may be because of 1T workforce consist of younger age group.
The majority of study sample (77%) was graduates. The bulk of the younger work force (43%) in IT field comprised of IT graduates. le gives the clue that recently, Sri Lankan curriculum has given way to develop these professionals at higher education institutes. However, there were 20% of non lT graduates in the study sample, indicating that still the demand for IT workforce cannot be met merely with 1T graduates since the curriculum which leads to IT degree commenced recently.
Furthermore, other educational qualifications such as diploma, advanced diploma also has come into play to me. el the demand. The present study revealed that there were 23% Diploma and Ad vanced Diploma holders among the study sample. IT professionals enjoy very attractive starting sala ries regardless of the sector they find employment in. An overall the entry level salary is around Rs 20,000 per month 1. In the present study, the majority of IT professionals (57%) were earning salary 20,000 to 45,000 per month.
In this study, it was found that 55% of IT profes sionals did extra work hours (2:: 5 hours per week), but only 5.3% of the IT professionals were paid for extra duties. This indicates that IT professionals work hard for their salary.  stressor for them. There was a significant associa tion between work stress and GHQ score 2:: 6 (psychologically distressed) indicating that those who are having high work stress are more prone to psychological distress.

Work stress and factors associated with work stress
Perceived work overload was the most common stressor for IT professionals. Approximately 51 % of IT professionals were affected by work over load. A study conducted among IT professionals in North America, Europe and Australia has uncov ered that more than half (55%) of the chief IT offi cers indicated rising work load as a major source of stress in the work place 2 .
Io the Sri Lankao IT field, qualified workers are in demand 1 • Therefore, with the rapidly advancing demand placed on the worker, excessive workload on already understaffed IT organization can cause an immense pressure on employees. Due to the work overload, IT professionals have to work long hours, stay at work place for longer duration and disn1rbiog family relationships. Family conflicts can occur. Children can be neglected. Health status of the employee also disturbed 3 • All these factors can again act as su· essors (vicious cycle) and pro fessionals become more stressful.
Lack of rewards was a stressor for 49% of partici pants i.o present study. Io private sector organiza tions, most of the professional rewards are based on the performance, unlike in the public sector where most of the career rewards depends on the seniority and educ;atiooal qualifications but not on the performance. Thus, to get rewards IT profes sional should perform at a predetermined level. This can become a stressor for them. Lack of skills or inadequacy of knowledge or any other factor An organization which does not encourage a sense of belonging, worker participation in deci sion making and good communication within its ranks is likely to generate stress•· In the present study, it was found that less appreciation in pa. i ticipation in decision making was a stressor for 42% of participants. Young IT professionals who are working in the private sector withom much experience will not enjoy job autonomy. Inability of worker to have control over his own environment becomes a stressor for him;.

Journal of the Community Physicians of Sri l.a1tka
A study carried out by Warburton 6 on 5296 office workers in several countries revealed that job dissatisfaction caused more stress in the work place. According to his study 25% of senior man agers and chief executives among the study group reported dissatisfaction with their jobs. In the present study, job dissatisfaction among Sri Lankan IT professionals was 26%.
Working environment is another determining factor for work stress 7 · Among IT professionals in the study group, 31 % was affected by poor physi cal environment at work place. It was found that insufficient software/hardware, poor quality/ configuration of available tools, inconvenient arrangement of tables and computer chairs and air conditioning were stressors for some pa1ticipants. The majority of IT professional among the study sample had a high work stress level.

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The study sample grouped into two by dividing at so•h percentile of work stress distribution into two categories; low level of work stress vs. high level of work stress.
Almost all participants who were psychologically distressed were in the high work stress category, but there were some participants who were not psychologically distressed, still they had high level of work stress. This reflects the fact that even though the work stress is associated with psycho logical distress, it always does not cause psycho logical distress.
The present study revealed that, with increasing age, work stress also increased. With increasing age, IT professionals get more work experience, with that work experience these professionals are allocated to newer job categories with higher responsibilities with higher remunerations 1 • So, unlike in the younger age group who are engaged in less responsible job categories, this older group face more demands at the work place. Another factor which can cause stress on older IT professional is job insecurity. With rapidly changing modem tech nology, even older people have to keep in touch with new technology; otherwise they will be replaced by new comers to the field who are equipped with newer technology. With increasing age of this young workforce, especially females when they enter into marriage, affected by other stressors; work/ family imbalance which ultimately can aggravate job stress.
In present study, sex was not found co be significantly associated with work stress. The female. IT workforce mainly consisted of unmarried young females, who are employed in low stressful job categories. On the other hand, there is a high turnover rate in the female IT workforce.Especially after marriage they leave t�e field because of work/ family imbalance. So, sti'essful females are not retained in this field 8 · In the present study, marital status was found to be significantly assodated with work stress. IT professionals whe�hey work Jong hours do not have adequate time to have good relationships with their families. Family members become neglected. Married professionals are more stressful in their attempt to balance work and family.
Today, the Sri Lankan economy does not favour the traditional way of one party to become income generator for the family. Instead, dual income fami lies have come into play. In the present study,

Joumal of the Comm1111ity Physicians of Sri Lanka
it was found that a majority of the spouses of IT professionals were employed. Employment status of spouses caused increase stress among IT professionals. This may be due to the fact that when both are employed, and work Jong hours, it can cause work/family imbalance which aggravate the work stress, child caring problems etc.
All participants who perceived that their children stress" category. The reason for this might be that they are overloaded with work and unable to give due care for children.
Lack of social relationships is a stressor for work 5 • In the present study a Larger proportion of partici pants having good social relationships, were found to be in the low work stress category. This associa tion was statistically significant and indicates that lack of social relationships has become a stressor for the IT professionals. This is because, good so cial interactions help to overcome stress , and there fore they can manage stress easily.
In the present study, it was found that, there was 2 statistically significant association between higl: stress and increasing level of monthly remuneration. IT professionals in the private sector are being paid well. Even at entry level they can get a salary of more that Rs 20,000 1 • With increasing levels of salary and more responsibilities they are subjected to more and more pressure. This could be the reason for an increasing work stress level with increasing salary. In the present study, it was found that majority (69%) of IT professional had Jess than two years service in the current organization. There were only 11 % of participants who had work experience greater than seven years at the current organization. Th.is fact is supported by IT workforce survey re sults. According to that survey, the employee. reten tion in the IT sector is very poor. The majority of professional has less than three years experience in one organization 1 • This may be due to the demand for experienced IT professionals, and IT organiz� tions are in search of experienced professionals. The professional who stay longer than three years dura tion in one station become mature at that organiza tion and enter into more esteemed, highly paid posi tions like IT management and project management 1. Findings of this study show that with increasing years of service in the current organization, the pro portion of participants of the high stress category increases. IT professionals enter into more responsi ble posts with maturity and pressure on them

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increases. They become more target oriented and thus their stress level also increases.
Cooper and Cartwright 9 claimed professionals like managers working more than ten hours a day is not uncommon but working beyond four hours per week would be increasi ogl y unproductive. Information Technology organizational culture contributes to long work hours, as this behaviour is often valued and expected. Many organizations value long work hours and equate this to commitment and high performance. Among the study sample, the majority did extra duty more than 5 hours per week. It was observed that some professionals (I%) did extra hours at very extreme levels. (more than 40 hours per week). There was a scatistieally significant association between participants who did more than five hours extra duty per week and their work stress levels. Th. is can be due to the fact that the groups who work long hours are the groups who have work overload and they belong to the groups which are under stress. In this study, work overload was identified as the top rea son for work stress among IT professional. fJi this study it was found that the majority (70%) of professional do not do weekend duties. A statistically significantly association was observed between work stress level and frequency of week end duties. The group who tends to do weekend duties was the same group who are overloaded with work.

Copi11g with stress
In this study, it was found that a problem focused stress coping strategy was adapted by a majority of IT professionals. lo conflict situations related to work such as difficulty in meeting project dead lines, dealing with customers, difficulty in completing assignment and situation with work overloud, most participants ndnpted problem fo. cused strategies: individuals evaluate the situation and does something to change or avoid it. This is the healthiest method of stress coping, as it is problem oriented. IT professionals have used to this method of coping because in day to day activities this type of problems should be settled. The emotion focused stress coping strategy has little place in the working environment to deal with the above problems.

Joumal of the Community Physicia11s of Sri umka
Even though, majority of participants practiced problem focused strategy in given selected situations usually people practice both emotion focused and problem focused methods in coping with stress. Emotion focused coping strategies are two types: harmless and harmful.
The International Labour Organization revealed that stressful work might tempt the worker to use drugs or smoke in order to reduce tension' 0 • The majority of the participants in present study practiced harmless emotion focused strategy more frequently. But 7% of participants frequently consumed alcohol and 5% smoked frequently. IT professionals should be encouraged to practice stress coping strategies instead of smoking or consuming alcohol to relieve stress.