Week 2: Initial Research And Creating The Survey

Hi everyone, welcome to this week’s blog post! In this post, I will go over the following topics:

1. Initial Research
2. Finding A Dataset
3. Creating My Own Survey

Initial Research:

Before I begin my project, I wanted to do some research on current methods used by tech companies to promote employee mental health. The most common support method I found was that many companies use EAPs (employee assistance programs) in order to support their employees’ workplace mental health. These are work-based intervention programs that can help employees resolve personal problems that may be negatively affecting their performance. However, I also found that employees can be afraid to use this resource due to fear of stigma or shame and their lack of understanding on how these confidential programs work. 

Other methods that some companies use but are not as widespread include:

• Providing Counseling Sessions And Coaching For Employees. Not All Companies Do This, But Some Companies Like Starbucks Have Started Providing Up To 20 Free Counseling Sessions For Their Employees. This Could Be Very Useful If It Was More Widespread Among Companies. 
• Giving Employees Access To Meditation Apps And Online Mental Health Resources. Many Companies Have Given Employees Access To Wellbeing Apps And Other Online Mental Health Resources To Reduce Stress And Anxiety, And Many Of These Have Seen An Increase In Visitors Over The Last Few Months.

Finding A Dataset:

For the dataset to train my machine learning models on, I decided that I will use the OSMI Mental Health in Tech Survey from 2016. Even though this is a bit old, and before the pandemic, but it will give me the least biased results since it had the most respondents. This survey has over a thousand participants, which is much more compared to the more recent surveys.  

Along with the dataset from this survey, I will be creating my own survey, partially based on this survey, which will be shorter, and will get responses for every question from every participant, allowing for a more comprehensive look at each participant. Additionally, my survey will ask employees for their suggestions on how their employers can better support their mental health. This will allow for employees with firsthand experience to give their feedback and suggestions on ways to improve the current support provided by companies.

Creating My Own Survey:

First, I began by writing questions to gain demographic information about the participants.  

Next, I asked about the mental health treatment status of the participant, so that I could use this information later on in order to find correlation between mental health treatment status and other demographic variables.  

Finally, I decided to add more questions on the current level of support provided by the tech companies for their employees and on how employee productivity is affected by mental health issues. I also put in questions to determine the level of awareness of employees about mental health resources available to them. For this part of the survey, I based my questions off of the OSMI Mental Health in Tech Survey from 2021. 

I also added the free response question at the end for employees to give their own suggestions and ideas on how their employers can better support their mental health.  

Using the results from this survey will allow me to draw trends between demographic variables like gender, age, and mental health treatment status. I will also learn more about the current level of support provided by companies, which will help me in determining what change needs to be made to better support employees.  

For now, I will send this survey out to any tech employees I know. 

I will need as many responses as possible, in order to get less biased results. While I wait on the responses, I will begin the initial data exploration of the 2016 OSMI Mental Health in Tech Survey dataset, and I will begin to train the machine learning models on the data.  

If you know any tech employees, please have them take the survey. It’s really short, and this would help me a lot! Here is the link: https://forms.gle/yHg7hdoomRxgftwS9 

Thank you and see you next week, Aashirya   

Sources: 

1. “OSMI Mental Health In Tech Survey 2021.” Typeform.Com, 2021, Osmi.Typeform.Com/Report/Fja7Jb9K/T5F4sKEyeGhGgU7V.
2. “JOSSO 2 By Atricore.” Shrm.Org, 2023, Www.Shrm.Org/Resourcesandtools/Tools-And-Samples/Hr-Qa/Pages/Whatisaneap.Aspx.
3. Rawe, Julie. “Workplace Mental Health: How To Support Employee Mental Wellness | Understood.” Understood, Understood, 12 Oct. 2020, Www.Understood.Org/En/Articles/Workplace-Mental-Health-5-Ways-To-Support-Employee-Wellness.
4. “5 Ways Companies Are Supporting Employees’ Mental Health And Preventing Burnout.” Linkedin.Com, 2020, Www.Linkedin.Com/Business/Talent/Blog/Talent-Engagement/Ways-Companies-Support-Mental-Health-And-Prevent-Burnout.
5. Open Sourcing Mental Illness, LTD. “OSMI Mental Health In Tech Survey 2016.” Kaggle.Com, 2016, Www.Kaggle.Com/Datasets/Osmi/Mental-Health-In-Tech-2016.