Predicted Questions and Model Answers

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Q1: What is the difference between stress and burnout? (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (49 words): Stress involves overengagement — excessive physiological and emotional arousal in response to demands. Burnout (Maslach, 1981) is chronic workplace syndrome characterised by emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and reduced personal accomplishment — a state of disengagement. Stress is acute and recoverable with rest; burnout is gradual and requires structural workplace changes.

Q2: Explain Type A and Type B personality and their relation to occupational stress. (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (52 words): Type A personality (Friedman and Rosenman) is time-urgent, competitive, hostile, and achievement-driven — associated with twice the cardiovascular disease risk and high occupational stress. Type B is relaxed, patient, and less competitive, showing lower stress susceptibility. Among Type A traits, hostility is the primary predictor of stress-related health damage.

Q3: Describe emotion-focused and problem-focused coping with examples. (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (51 words): Problem-focused coping targets the stress source directly — through time management, planning, or assertiveness. It is most effective when stressors are controllable. Emotion-focused coping regulates the emotional response — through meditation, social support, or positive reappraisal — and is adaptive when stressors are uncontrollable. Both strategies are appropriate depending on context.

Q4: What is General Adaptation Syndrome? Explain its three stages. (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (50 words): General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), proposed by Hans Selye (1936), describes the body's universal response to prolonged stress in three stages: Alarm (fight-or-flight, adrenaline release), Resistance (body adapts; physiological arousal sustained), and Exhaustion (adaptive reserves depleted; immune suppression, illness, or breakdown result). Chronic stress arrests the body in the resistance stage.

Q5: What are the gender-specific stressors faced by women in the workplace? (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (51 words): Women face distinctive occupational stressors: the double burden of paid work plus unpaid domestic and care work, glass ceiling barriers, gender pay gaps, workplace sexual harassment, role conflict between career and cultural expectations of motherhood, and tokenism in male-dominated fields. These structural inequalities produce chronic hypervigilance and higher rates of anxiety disorders.

Q6: What is hardiness? How does it buffer against occupational stress? (5 marks, 50 words)

Model Answer (50 words): Hardiness (Kobasa, 1979) is a stress-buffering personality pattern comprising three Cs: Commitment (finding meaning in work), Control (belief in influencing outcomes), and Challenge (viewing stressors as growth opportunities). Hardy individuals cognitively reappraise threats as less dangerous, maintain lower cortisol responses under high occupational demands, and show significantly reduced burnout rates.