Adelina Zielinska | UX Researcher
City University: How can we help mitigate negative effects of perfectionism on workplace well-being?
Overview
My Role: Researcher
Timeline: 6 weeks
Tools: Survey Monkey, SPPS Statistics
Methods: Screener, Four-week longitudinal survey study, Zero-order correlations, Hierarchical regression analysis, Bootstrapped mediation tests, Effect size
Background
As part of my MSc Organisational Psychology dissertation research, I joined a larger project run by the City University of London, which focused on investigating the influence of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism on employee well-being and the mediating role of cognitive coping strategies. The outcomes of this study helped impact the awareness of employee burnout and inform strategies of preventing and treating it. I decided to include it in my portfolio to showcase my experience working with large data sets and complex quantitative analysis methods.
Hypotheses
The study was based on a premise that perfectionist personality traits can be either adaptive or maladaptive in individuals, i.e., work to one’s benefit or against them in a workplace context.
1. We hypothesised that maladaptive perfectionism will be associated with employee burnout and negative affect while adaptive perfectionism will not.
Another theoretical assumption, on which the study was based, suggests that individuals use different coping strategies to deal with stressful events in their lives. Those too, can be either adaptive, i.e., helping individuals successfully deal with stressors, or maladaptive such as worry or rumination.
2. We further hypothesised that maladaptive perfectionists will choose maladaptive coping strategies while adaptive perfectionists will employ adaptive coping strategies.
3. Finally, we hypothesised that the coping strategies the individuals with the two different perfectionist traits choose to deal with stressors, will in turn affect their workplace well-being.
The last hypothesis is portrayed by the diagram below.
Methods
-
The first stage of data collection was an online survey which screened participants for perfectionist personality traits.
-
After that, 199 participants who possessed perfectionist traits were sent weekly online surveys that measured their coping strategies and workplace well-being for four consecutive weeks. The participants were employees of various industry sectors.
-
I analysed the quantitative data obtained in this study using descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations as the first step of the analysis. The initial correlation results laid ground for further hierarchical regression analysis and mediation tests.
For more details on the methodology and results, my full dissertation can be downloaded under the link below
Key Findings
Impact
The results of this research project were included in two publications (linked on the right) which aimed to shed light on some of the factors involved in employees’ experience of diminished workplace well-being and thus have implications for well-being interventions among employees.
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0028055
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1359432X.2017.1391792
Reflections
Being a part of this project I learned:
-
The fundamentals of ethical practice, i.e.:
- How to obtain informed consent,
- How to avoid bias when testing hypotheses
- What information to disclose to participants in order to avoid bias.
-
How difficult it is to conduct longitudinal studies and the importance of incentivising participants.
-
That statistics is a science that keeps evolving and it is important to follow approaches that are up to date.
