The Association of Stress with the Socio-Economic Factors of Individuals That Attended the Taxpayers’ Appreciation Week 2018, Kampala Uganda

Work-related stress has increased in nine European Union (EU) countries in the last ten years. Eighty (80%) percent of the general population in European countries believes that work-related stress will rise in the coming five years. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the association between the various levels of stress with the socio-economic elements among individuals that participated in Uganda’s tax payer’s appreciation week in the year 2018 held in Kampala. Methodology: This study applied a cross-sectional study design that unified quantitative research methods and a convenience sampling method were used in this study to gather the information from the 390 respondents. Data were examined using SPSS version 20; univariate and bivariate analysis were done to measure the association between stress and the participant’s socio-economic factors. Results: Respondents who were employed recorded the majority with a percentage of 60%, while the unemployed recorded the minority with a percentage of 40%. Respondents who were employed were more likely to experience low stress as compared to those who were unemployed, under the category of moderate stress, respondents who were employed were more likely to be moderately stressed as compared to their unemployed counterparts, as for the category of high stress, unemployed respondents were more likely to be highly stressed than those that were employed and this was not statistically significant (X2 =2.374; p-value = 0.305). Conclusion: The results from this research indicated that there was no significant association between the socioeconomic factors of the respondents with stress levels. Recommendations: More community sensitization and awareness should be carried out to educate individuals about stress and its impacts on health.