Chronic exposure to adverse psychosocial work factors and high psychological distress among white-collar workers: A 5-year prospective study

Occupational Health and Well-being Questionnaire (OHWQ): an instrument to assess psychosocial risk and protective factors in the workplace

OBJECTIVES

Psychosocial stressors at work have been identified as significant risk factors for several mental and physical health problems. These stressors must be compensated by psychosocial resources to prevent or reduce adverse effects on health. Questionnaires measuring these stressors and resources already exist, but none integrate digital stress, ethical culture, and psychosocial safety climate; factors that are increasingly linked to workers' health. This study aims to develop and establish the psychometric properties of one of the most comprehensive instruments measuring the psychosocial work environment to date: the Occupational Health and Well-being Questionnaire (OHWQ).

STUDY DESIGN

A cross-sectional validation study is proposed to develop the OHWQ and document its psychometric properties.

METHODS

The OHWQ was developed from validated instruments to which new items were added. The questionnaire includes psychosocial dimensions, along with indicators of psychological distress, musculoskeletal disorders, and well-being. It was administered to a sample of 2770 participants from a population working in the academic field. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and the calculation of Cronbach's α coefficient were used to identify the variables, items, and, dimensions of the OHWQ and to document its main psychometric properties.

RESULTS

The acceptability of the measurement model was evaluated by the reliability of the items, internal consistency between the items, and the convergent and discriminant validity. Construct validity was assessed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Using factor analyses and cut-off rules, the new instrument has 124 items grouped into 22 dimensions. The OHWQ demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity, as well as reasonable fit indices. The internal consistency of the scales was also good (Cronbach's α = 0.68-0.96, median = 0.85).

CONCLUSION

The OHWQ demonstrated good psychometric properties. It could be useful for both research purposes and for workplaces interested in developing concrete action plans aimed at improving the balance between psychosocial work stressors and resources.

Associations between chronic work stress and plasma chromogranin A/catestatin among healthy workers

OBJECTIVES

Plasma chromogranin A (CgA) may play a critical role on linking work stress to health outcomes. The aim of our study was to investigate the associations between work stress and plasma CgA levels in healthy workers without chronic diseases.

METHODS

The study included 260 healthy workers from EHOP study. Work stressors were assessed by the Chinese version of the 23-item ERI-Q questionnaire. Plasma CgA and catestatin levels were measured by ELISA kits. The demographic characteristics were collected from medical records.

RESULTS

Among the final 260 subjects including 173 males (66.5%) and 87 females (33.5%), the average age was 37.6 ± 10.6 years old. Effort, overcommitment, and ERI were positively associated with plasma CgA level, respectively (r = 0.267, 0.319, and 0.304, all p < .001), while reward was negatively associated with CgA level (r = -0.237, p < .001). The workers with high effort, overcommitment, or ERI had significantly higher plasma CgA levels, while the workers with high rewards had significantly lower plasma CgA levels. The workers with both high overcommitment and high ERI had highest plasma CgA levels. In the linear regression analysis, after adjustment for confounders, effort, overcommitment, and ERI were respectively positively related to plasma CgA, while reward negatively related to plasma CgA. The associations between work stress and plasma catestatin was not significant. The ratio of CgA and catestatin was associated with work stress.

CONCLUSIONS

Work stress is associated with plasma CgA which may be play a crucial role on the pathway from chronic work stress to cardiovascular diseases.

Occupational Stress in Spanish Police Officers: Validating the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire

The Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (hereinafter, ERIQ) has been largely used worldwide to assess job stress, but it has not yet been applied in Spanish police. The objective of this study was to examine the construct validity and the internal consistency of the ERIQ in police officers. A cross-sectional study was carried out, using a nonprobability sampling (quota). A total of 217 Spanish police officers participated, 192 men (88.47%) and 25 women (11.53%). The mean age was 41 years (SD = 7.51). These police officers completed the ERIQ together with some other questionnaires (DECORE-21, MBI, GHQ and STAI) in order to provide evidence for validity based on the relationships to other constructs. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed and a matrix of correlations with the rest of constructs was created. The results showed an appropriate fit to the original model consisting of three scales. In addition, the scales of the ERIQ presented the expected relationship with the other constructs. The ERIQ is a valid instrument for assessing occupational stress in Spanish police officers and can improve the interventions in this professional group.

Work, family, work-family conflict and psychological distress: A revisited look at the gendered vulnerability pathways

This paper revisited the vulnerability hypothesis to explain the greater level of psychological distress among working women compared to working men. A comprehensive vulnerability model was tested in which work and family stressors and psychosocial resources are directly related to psychological distress and indirectly through work-to-family (WFC) and family-to-work (FWC) conflicts. Data came from a random sample of 989 women and 1,037 men working in 63 Canadian establishments. Multilevel path analyses were performed separately for men and for women. The results show that many work/family stressors and resources are linked to men's or women's psychological distress directly and indirectly through WFC and FWC. However, the z-test used to assess whether the relationships differed significantly between women and men indicated that only two relationships differ significantly between the two groups: experimenting problems with children and a low self-esteem are associated positively to psychological distress through FWC only for women. In addition to showing the specific involvement of work-family conflict in the psychological distress inequality, this study contributes to revealing that testing the differences in the magnitude of the relation offer a more suitable appraisal of the vulnerability mechanism involved in the psychological distress inequality between men and women.

Workplace psychosocial stressors experienced by migrant workers in Australia: A cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVE

To explore work-related psychosocial stressors among people of Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic-speaking backgrounds currently working in Australia.

METHODS

In 2015, a telephone survey of 585 Vietnamese, Chinese and Arabic-speaking workers asked about workplace bullying, ethnic discrimination, job complexity, degree of control, security and fairness of payment along with demographic and employment information. Estimates of job-related psychosocial stressors were derived and regression analyses used to identify significant associations.

RESULTS

At least one workplace stressor was reported by 83% of the workers in the study. Education was significantly associated with experiencing any psychosocial stressor and also with the total number of stressors. Workers aged 45 years and older were more likely to be bullied or experience racial discrimination compared with younger workers of any ethnicity. There was a greater likelihood of reporting low control over a job when the interview was conducted in a language other than English and the workers were either Chinese or Arabic. Workers on a fixed-term contract, independent of ethnicity were more likely to report a job with low security. Overall psychosocial job quality decreased with education and was associated with occupation type which interacted with ethnicity and gender.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that job-related psychosocial stressors are widespread but not uniform across ethnic groups. Further research into what drives differences in work experience for migrant groups would provide information to guide both employers and migrants in ways to reduce workplace psychosocial stressors.