Published Paper Details:

Background: Farmers face multiple occupational stressors, including heavy workload, climatic uncertainty, crop failure, market fluctuations, and financial instability, which may adversely affect their mental and spiritual well-being. Understanding the relationship between the agricultural work environment, perceived stress, and spiritual well-being is important for promoting holistic health among farmers. Objective: This study aimed to assess the agricultural work environment, perceived stress, and spiritual well-being among farmers and examine the relationships among these variables. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional correlational study was conducted among 74 farmers in Odisha, India. Data were collected using a researcher-developed Agricultural Work Environment Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS). Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, Pearson's correlation, and simple linear regression were used for data analysis. Results: Farmers reported moderately adverse agricultural work environments and moderate levels of perceived stress. The Agricultural Work Environment Scale demonstrated acceptable reliability (Cronbach's ? = 0.737), the PSS-10 showed acceptable reliability for exploratory research (? = 0.687), and the SWBS demonstrated excellent reliability (? = 0.909). Agricultural work environment was positively associated with perceived stress (r = 0.529, p< 0.001) and significantly predicted perceived stress, explaining 27.8% of the variance. No statistically significant associations were found between agricultural work environment and spiritual well-being or between perceived stress and spiritual well-being. Conclusion: Poorer agricultural work environments were associated with higher perceived stress among farmers. Although participants reported relatively high levels of spiritual well-being, it was not significantly associated with agricultural work environment or perceived stress in this sample. These findings suggest that improving agricultural working conditions and strengthening mental health support may help reduce stress among farmers. Further studies with larger and more diverse samples are recommended to confirm these findings.