The 7th Life Environment and Workplace Stress Survey

The Tsukuba Science City Network is an organization of the city’s research and academic institutes that aims to promote cooperation among its member institutes.

The Tsukuba Science City Network conducts a mental health survey every 5 years of the researchers and engineers from the member institutes in Tsukuba city. From February to March 2017, we conducted the survey via an anonymous web questionnaire entitled The 7th Life Environment and Workplace Stress Survey .

Gender, Age, Occupation, Employment Status, Years of Employment, Last Education, Annual Household Income, Marital Status, Number of Children, Place of Residence, Type of Residence, Years of Residence, Length of Employment, Commuting Means, Living Environment, Smoking Habits, Passive Smoking, Problems in Living Environment, Exercise Habits, Forest Bathing Habits, Overseas Experience, Hospital Visits, Social Capital in Work, Self-rated Health, Mental Health Continuum Short Form, Brief Scales for Coping Profile, Life Orientation Test-Revised, Brief Scales for Job Stress, Sense of Coherence, K6, Athens Insomnia Scale, Bullying Experience, and Suicidal Thoughts.

The total number of subjects was 19,481 workers at 53 research institutes in Tsukuba City. They were all workers affiliated with the Tsukuba Science City Network. The workers were contacted via e-mail through the general affairs department of each institution. A URL described in the e-mail linked to a self-administered questionnaire form. At the outset, participants were able to choose either the Japanese or the English version of the questionnaire.

All participants remained anonymous, so no data regarding to which institute the participants belonged were obtained.

The total number of respondents was 7255, a response rate of 37.2%. 60 participants were excluded due to missing data or no response, who refers to subjects who were sent the survey but did not respond. We selected as the study participants 7175 people (average age, 44 years; 4509 men and 2666 women) aged 20 to 65 years who answered the main response items.

The web survey contained clear statements that participation was entirely voluntary, that it was an anonymous survey, that the privacy of the respondent would be respected, and that the data would be strictly controlled. In The 7th Life Environment and Workplace Stress Survey , the respondents were not told in advance that the data would be used for research purposes.

The consent of the participants was taken when The Tsukuba Science City Network conducted the study. We received permission from The Tsukuba Science City Network to use the data for our research. We published an opt-out notice on our laboratory's homepage, stating that the data would be used for research purposes without any name on the participants' names (http://occup-aerospace-psy.org/content/files/7tsukukyov3R1.pdf).

From the 8th survey, we will inform respondents in advance that the collected data will be used for research purposes. This research proposal was reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the University of Tsukuba (approval #1374). All procedures were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the national research committee and the Helsinki Declaration.