1. Stress Experiences and Appraisals Influence Global Perspectives on Meeting Satisfaction
Presenter: Emily Adams
Advisor: Joseph Allen
Industrial/Organizational Psychology

2. Why Meetings?
So first of all, a question I often have to answer is “why study meetings?” Most people have preconceived notions about meetings: what they are, how they should run, and how there should generally be fewer of them in their lives. It may not be uncommon for a fellow meeting attendee or two to be napping during the meetings, and indeed, even friends who ask about my research automatically fall asleep when I tell them about meetings. As Industrial/Organizational Psychologists, we study the good, the bad, and the ugly about workplaces. Meetings are an increasingly common component to most modern jobs, so it’s important to study them so we can understand them better in hopes of improving the day-to-day experiences of employees and the overall functioning of the organizations they work for.

3. Meetings
3 or more people gathered for work-related topic (Leach, Rogelberg, Warr, & Burnfield, 2009; Allen, Lehmann-Willenbrock, & Rogelberg, 2015)
Employees spend 6-20 hours weekly in meetings (Rogelberg, Scott, & Kello, 2007)
Agendas universally good (Cohen, Rogelberg, Allen, & Luong, 2011)
Participation required for success (Nixon & Littlepage, 1992)

4. Meetings: A Matter of Perspective
Meeting leader blind spot (Kello, 2015)
Latecomers (Mroz & Allen, 2017)
Counterproductive meeting behaviors (Yoerger, Crowe, Allen, & Jones, 2017)
Feelings about meetings overall (Allen, Sands, Mueller, Frear, Mudd, & Rogelberg, 2012)
Research has shown that even people sitting in the exact same meeting may come out of the meeting having had very different experiences.

5. Challenge-hindrance Model of Stress
Challenges: can be overcome, result in a sense of achievement (Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000)
Hindrances: insurmountable roadblocks (Cavanaugh, et al., 2000)
Having control over your work and social supports available may mitigate the negative effects of hindrances
Recently, a trend toward appraisal of demands (Webster, Beehr, & Love, 2011)
Borrowing from the Occupational Health Psychology literature, a well-established theory of stress that can help us understand these differences in how people experience meetings is the challenge-hindrance model of occupational stress.

6. Hypotheses
The relationship between experiences of meeting-related demands and overall meeting satisfaction will be moderated by
(H1) challenge appraisal
(H2) hindrance appraisal
of the demands, such that those who rate the demands as most
(H1) challenging will have the most favorable
(H2) hindering will have the least favorable
global perceptions of meeting satisfaction

7. Method Online study using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 492)
Provided feelings about meetings in general: Meeting Satisfaction (Rogelberg, Allen, Shanock, Scott, and Shuffler, 2010)
Rated meeting stressors: Workload Demands Scale (adapted from Remondet & Hansson, 1991)
Frequency: how often you experienced this
Challenge: can help you meet your goal, somewhat stressful, motivating
Hindrance: interferes with your work, road block, impossible to overcome
Example item: I have been forced to attend meetings for a coworker in addition to attending my own meetings.

8. Results: Challenge Appraisal (H1)
F(3, 489) = 10.60, p < .001
ΔR2 = .01
β = -.11, B = -.11
t(489) = -2.24, p < .05
95% CI [-0.20, -0.01]

9. Results: Hindrance Appraisal (H2)
F(3, 489) = 13.58, p < .001
ΔR2 = .02
β = -.14, B = -.13
t(489) = -2.80, p < .01
95% CI [-0.22, -0.04]

10. Discussion
Challenge appraisals were not expected: prior literature suggests the presence of challenge demands have positive effects
Hindrance appraisals were as expected
Regardless of whether a demand is considered a challenge or a hindrance, if the employee experiences a lot of it, it negatively impacts their perceptions of meetings

11. Questions
Thank you to
The Office of Research and Creative Activity for funding this research through the Graduate Research and Creative Activity grant
Dr. Joseph Allen for advising me during this project
CME Members for their advice throughout the project: Isaac Lindquist, Nicole Landowski, and Joseph Mroz