Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

  • Volume 35
  • /
  • Pages.7.1-7.14
  • /
  • 2023
  • /
  • 1225-3618(pISSN)
  • /
  • 2052-4374(eISSN)
The Korean Society of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (대한직업환경의학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Developing a short standard questionnaire for assessing work organization hazards: the Healthy Work Survey (HWS)

  • BongKyoo Choi (Center for Work and Health Research) ;
  • Youngju Seo (Center for Work and Health Research)
  • Received : 2023.01.30
  • Accepted : 2023.03.13
  • Published : 2023.12.31
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

Background: At present, no short standard questionnaire exists for assessing and comparing major work organization hazards in the workplaces of the United States. Methods: We conducted a series of psychometric tests (content validity, factor analysis, differential-item functioning analysis, reliability, and concurrent validity) to validate and identify core items and scales for major work organization hazards using the data from the 2002-2014 General Social Surveys (GSSs), including the Quality of Worklife (QWL) questionnaire. In addition, an extensive literature review was undertaken to find other major work organization hazards which were not addressed in the GSS. Results: Although the overall validity of the GSS-QWL questionnaire was satisfactory in the psychometric tests, some GSS-QWL items of work-family conflict, psychological job demands, job insecurity, use of skills on the job, and safety climate scales appeared to be weak. In the end, 33 questions (31 GSS-QWL and 2 GSS) were chosen as the least, but best validated core questions and included in a new short standard questionnaire (called the Healthy Work Survey [HWS]). And their national norms were established for comparisons. Furthermore, based on the literature review, fifteen more questions for assessing other significant work organization hazards (e.g., lack of scheduling control, emotional demands, electronic surveillance, wage theft) were included in the new questionnaire. Thus, the HWS includes 48 questions in total for assessing traditional and emerging work organization hazards, which covers seven theoretical domains: work schedule/arrangement, control, support, reward, demands, safety, and justice. Conclusions: The HWS is a short standard questionnaire for assessing work organization hazards which can be used as a first step toward the risk management of major work organization hazards in the workplaces of the US.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

We thank Dr. Naomi Swanson (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; NIOSH) for providing a copy of the Quality of Worklife (QWL) questionnaire included in the 2018 General Social Survey. We also thanks the following researchers for providing information on instruments of some major work organization hazards or health outcomes which are not addressed in the QWL questionnaire: Drs. Paul Landsbergis (State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University), Marnie Dobson (University of California, Irvine), Peter Schnall (Center for Social Epidemiology), Pouran Faghri (University of Connecticut), Meredith Minkler (University of California, Berkeley), Isabel Garcia (University of California, Los Angeles), Toni Alterman (NIOSH), Gary Namie (Workplace Bullying Institute), and Hermann Burr (Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, BAuA in Germany).

References

  1. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The changing organization of work and the safety and health of working people. DHHS (NIOSH) publication No. 2002-116. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2002-116/pdfs/2002-116.pdf?id=10.26616/NIOSHPUB2002116. Updated 2002. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  2. Dragano N, Siegrist J, Nyberg ST, Lunau T, Fransson EI, Alfredsson L, et al. Effort-reward imbalance at work and incident coronary heart disease: a multicohort study of 90,164 individuals. Epidemiology 2017;28(4):619-26.
  3. Kivimaki M, Nyberg ST, Batty GD, Fransson EI, Heikkila K, Alfredsson L, et al. Job strain as a risk factor for coronary heart disease: a collaborative meta-analysis of individual participant data. Lancet 2012;380(9852):1491-7.
  4. Virtanen M, Nyberg ST, Batty GD, Jokela M, Heikkila K, Fransson EI, et al. Perceived job insecurity as a risk factor for incident coronary heart disease: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2013;347:f4746.
  5. Stansfeld S, Candy B. Psychosocial work environment and mental health--a meta-analytic review. Scand J Work Environ Health 2006;32(6):443-62.
  6. Theorell T, Hammarstrom A, Aronsson G, Traskman Bendz L, Grape T, Hogstedt C, et al. A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and depressive symptoms. BMC Public Health 2015;15(1):738.
  7. Clays E, De Bacquer D, Leynen F, Kornitzer M, Kittel F, De Backer G. The impact of psychosocial factors on low back pain: longitudinal results from the Belstress study. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2007;32(2):262-8.
  8. Ostergren PO, Hanson BS, Balogh I, Ektor-Andersen J, Isacsson A, Orbaek P, et al. Incidence of shoulder and neck pain in a working population: effect modification between mechanical and psychosocial exposures at work? Results from a one year follow up of the Malmo shoulder and neck study cohort. J Epidemiol Community Health 2005;59(9):721-8.
  9. Milner A, Butterworth P, Bentley R, Kavanagh AM, LaMontagne AD. Sickness absence and psychosocial job quality: an analysis from a longitudinal survey of working Australians, 2005-2012. Am J Epidemiol 2015;181(10):781-8.
  10. Svedberg P, Mather L, Bergstrom G, Lindfors P, Blom V. Work-home interference, perceived total workload, and the risk of future sickness absence due to stress-related mental diagnoses among women and men: a prospective twin study. Int J Behav Med 2018;25(1):103-11.
  11. Oshio T, Tsutsumi A, Inoue A, Suzuki T, Miyaki K. The reciprocal relationship between sickness presenteeism and psychological distress in response to job stressors: evidence from a three-wave cohort study. J Occup Health 2017;59(6):552-61.
  12. International Standards Organization (ISO). Occupational health and safety management - Psychological health and safety at work - Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks (ISO 45003:2021). https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:45003:ed-1:v1:en. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  13. International Labor Organization (ILO). Inspection actions to deal with psychosocial risks (Module 15), ILO Curriculum on Building Modern and Effective Labour Inspection Systems. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_dialogue/---lab_admin/documents/genericdocument/wcms_856575.pdf. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  14. Health and Safety Executive. The HSE Management Standards indicator tool. https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/step2/surveys.htm. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  15. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Quality of Worklife questionnaire. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/stress/qwlquest.html. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  16. The General Social Survey Quality of Worklife Module. https://gss.norc.org/Pages/quality-of-worklife.aspx. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  17. Choi B, Garcia-Rivas J, Landsbergis P, Dobson M, Schnall P, Baker D, et al. International comparison of national work organizational risk assessment tools in seven countries. Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium to Advance Total Worker Health; 2018 May 8-11; Bethesda, MD, USA. St. Louis, MO, USA: Healthy Work Center; 2018.
  18. Shan Y, Imran H, Lewis P, Zhai D. Investigating the latent factors of quality of work-life affecting construction craft worker job satisfaction. J Constr Eng Manage 2017;143(5):04016134.
  19. Karasek RA, Gordon G, Pietrokovsky C, Frese M, Pieper C, Schwartz J, et al. Job Content Questionnaire and User's Guide. Los Angeles, CA, USA/Lowell, MA, USA: University of Southern California/University of Massachusetts; 1985.
  20. Karasek RA. Job demands, job decision latitude, and mental strain: implications for job redesign. Adm Sci Q 1979;24(2):285-308.
  21. Hochschild AR. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press; 1983.
  22. Siegel R, Konig CJ, Lazar V. The impact of electronic monitoring on employees' job satisfaction, stress, performance, and counterproductive work behavior: a meta-analysis. Comput Hum Behav Rep 2022;8:100227.
  23. Ball K. Electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace. https://op.europa.eu/en/publicationdetail/-/publication/e7e6f646-4694-11ec-89db-01aa75ed71a1/language-en. Updated 2021. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  24. Minkler M, Salvatore AL, Chang C, Gaydos M, Liu SS, Lee PT, et al. Wage theft as a neglected public health problem: an overview and case study from San Francisco's Chinatown district. Am J Public Health 2014;104(6):1010-20.
  25. Choi B, Landsbergis P, Seo Y, Dobson M, Schnall P. Creating a new instrument for work organization risk assessment in the United States: the Healthy Work Survey (HWS) project. Proceedings of the 2019 American Public Health Association Conference; 2019 November 2-6; Philadelphia, PA, USA. Washington, D.C., USA: American Public Health Association; 2019.
  26. Choi B. Developing a short, standard tool for work organization risk assessment based on the NIOSH Quality of Working Life (QWL) Survey. Proceedings of the 2nd Creating Healthy Organizations Conference; 2018 October 12; Costa Mesa, CA, USA.
  27. Choi B, Seo Y, Dobson M, Landsbergis P, Schnall P. Construct validity of the NIOSH Quality of Work-Life questionnaire: the Healthy Work Survey (HWS) project. Proceedings of the 2019 APA/NIOSH Work, Stress and Health Conference; 2019 November 6-9; Philadelphia, PA, USA. Washington, D.C., USA: American Psychological Association; 2019.
  28. Choi B, Dobson M, Landsbergis P, Schnall P. Developing a short on-line standard questionnaire for work organization risk assessment in the United States: The Healthy Work Survey (HWS) project. Proceedings of the 2019 APA/NIOSH Work, Stress and Health Conference; 2019 November 6-9; Philadelphia, PA, USA. Washington, D.C., USA: American Psychological Association; 2019.
  29. Choi B. Job strain, long work hours, and suicidal ideation in US workers: a longitudinal study. Int Arch Occup Environ Health 2018;91(7):865-75.
  30. Siegrist J. Adverse health effects of high-effort/low-reward conditions. J Occup Health Psychol 1996;1(1):27-41.
  31. Greenberg J. Organizational justice: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. J Manage 1990;16(2):399-432.
  32. Choi B, Bjorner JB, Ostergren PO, Clays E, Houtman I, Punnett L, et al. Cross-language differential item functioning of the job content questionnaire among European countries: the JACE study. Int J Behav Med 2009;16(2):136-47.
  33. Choi B, Kurowski A, Bond M, Baker D, Clays E, De Bacquer D, et al. Occupation-differential construct validity of the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) psychological job demands scale with physical job demands items: a mixed methods research. Ergonomics 2012;55(4):425-39.
  34. Orhede E, Kreiner S. Item bias in indices measuring psychosocial work environment and health. Scand J Work Environ Health 2000;26(3):263-72.
  35. Bjorner JB, Kreiner S, Ware JE, Damsgaard MT, Bech P. Differential item functioning in the Danish translation of the SF-36. J Clin Epidemiol 1998;51(11):1189-202.
  36. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Measuring healthy days. https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/pdfs/mhd.pdf. Updated 2000. Accessed January 20, 2023.
  37. Joyce K, Pabayo R, Critchley JA, Bambra C. Flexible working conditions and their effects on employee health and wellbeing. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2010;2010(2):CD008009.
  38. European Working Condition Survey 2015. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/european-workingconditions-surveys/sixth-european-working-conditions-survey-2015/ewcs-2015-questionnaire. Updated 2015. Accessed January 20, 2023
  39. Maestas N, Mullen KJ, Powell D, Von Wachter T, Wenger JB. Working Conditions in the United States: Results of the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey. Santa Monica, CA, USA: RAND Corporation; 2017.
  40. Pejtersen JH, Kristensen TS, Borg V, Bjorner JB. The second version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. Scand J Public Health 2010;38(3 Suppl):8-24.
  41. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Worker health information from the national health interview survey. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/nhis/default.html. Accessed on January 20, 2023.
  42. Quinn RP, Staines G. Quality of Employment Survey, 1977: Cross-Section. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1992-02-16.
  43. Namie G. 2017 Workplace bullying institute US workplace bullying survey. https://workplacebullying.org/download/2017-wbi/. Accessed on January 20, 2023.
  44. Leigh JP, De Vogli R. Low wages as occupational health hazards. J Occup Environ Med 2016;58(5):444-7.
  45. Colquitt JA. On the dimensionality of organizational justice: a construct validation of a measure. J Appl Psychol 2001;86(3):386-400.
  46. Dollard MF, Neser DY. Worker health is good for the economy: union density and psychosocial safety climate as determinants of country differences in worker health and productivity in 31 European countries. Soc Sci Med 2013;92:114-23.
  47. Callison K, Pesko MF. The effect of paid sick leave mandates on coverage, work absences, and presenteeism. J Hum Resour 2022;57(4):1178-208.
  48. Goh J, Pfeffer J, Zenios SA. The relationship between workplace stressors and mortality and health costs in the United States. Manage Sci 2016;62(2):608-28.
  49. Lerner D, Amick BC 3rd, Lee JC, Rooney T, Rogers WH, Chang H, et al. Relationship of employee-reported work limitations to work productivity. Med Care 2003;41(5):649-59.