A Study on the Perception of Stress and its Individual

The aim of this study was to investigate to what degree individual differences in curiosity, personality, self esteem and perceived social support are associated with perceived stress. One hundred customer service employees completed questionnaires collected through an anonymous survey collector website (www.surveymonkey.com). A convenience sample technique was used to collect customer service employee responses from multinational companies in Dublin and a snowball collection technique was used through LinkedIn and Facebook networking sites. The outcome of the study found three variables as significant predictors of perceived stress, namely conscientiousness, gender and neuroticism. Gender was found to have no significant relationship with the predictor variables. Curiosity was not found to be significantly related to perceived stress however it did have a positive moderate correlation with the personality trait conscientiousness. The study indicates that future interventions in relation to stress management especially in customer service centre organisations need to factor in gender, curiosity and trait variables into their continuous improvement and design.