The Effect of Communication Skills Training on Jobrelated Stress of the Experts

This paper reports a study of the effect of communication skills training on job-related stress of the experts of Shiraz Municipality. The study involved a semi-experimental design with pre-test-post-test and control and experimental groups. A total of 46 experts, sampled from among all experts working in Shiraz municipality drawing on cluster sampling strategy, participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to the experimental (N=22) and control (N=24) groups. To ensure the homogeneity of the groups, demographiccharacteristics including sex, educational level, age, marital status and work experience of the participants were taken into account. Both groups were pre-tested and then the experimental group received communication skills training. Both groups were administered a posttest and after an interval of one month a follow-up test. The instrument of the study included a questionnaire (HSE) on job-related stress with high validity and reliability. The research findings indicated that there was no significant difference between job-related stress levels of the groups except for the two subscales “colleagues’ support” and “relationship” at the level of 0.05.