The Use of Modern Information and Communication Systems and Technology and Experienced Stress at Work in Mixed Deaf-Hearing Teams

In this article we look at the use of ICST in two multilingual and deaf/hearing teams in an educational and research environment. We describe how job demands and job control (decision authority level) contribute to feelings of stress among the deaf and the hearing employees. We find that most information is received by all of the team members in writtten Dutch, as well as through the intranet and e-mail, but deaf employees predominantly rely on each other for informal information. Most of the employees feel that they are in control at work and that they fulfill the job demands. A multiple-regression analysis shows that experienced stress is lower as people have more control over their work and as they use Dutch as their first language at work. Experienced stress clearly increases with an experienced increase in job demands. When other factors are kept constant, deafness as such does not contribute to stress.