Testing the feasibility of 30 min of daily outdoor office work for stress management: A pilot study.

Only eight people took part, so the study is far too small to establish that outdoor working lowers stress. The parametric test was significant and the non-parametric test on the same data was not, so the result depends on which test is used. The outdoor week always came second, and stress was already falling by day 5 of the indoor week, so a general downward drift across the two weeks cannot be separated from the outdoor working. Stress was a single self-rated question, and participants knew what the study was about, so their answers may have been influenced by that. All participants rated their health as very good or fairly good and seven of eight had a university degree, so the findings may not apply to less healthy or less educated workers. Data were collected in Stockholm in October, so colder and darker conditions were not tested. One enrolled participant was excluded because they spent more time outdoors during the baseline week than in the outdoor week, which changes who is included in the analysis. The outdoor week also included a one-hour teaching session and meetings about outdoor working, so more changed than the time spent outdoors alone.

The study was funded by the Knowledge Foundation (grant number 20200068). The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest regarding the research, authorship or publication of the article.

Do not read this as proof that working outdoors reduces stress. The non-parametric test on the same data was not significant (p = .104) and there were only eight participants. The outdoor week always came second, and stress was already declining by day 5 of the first week, so an ordinary downward drift over the two weeks cannot be ruled out.