Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Agbenyikey, Wilfred

Titel

From JCQ 1.0 to JCQ 2.0: The awareness, assessment and epidemiological investigation of contemporary workplace psychosocial stressors

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• There have been tremendous psychosocial and organizational changes at the workplace over the last three decades. Structural and social changes at the workplace, which is inspired by neoliberal and neoclassical economic models, are in response of the saturation of goods and services and competition amongst corporations. These changes at the workplace has been blamed on numerous diseases and behavioral changes. This study assesses a) contemporary labor trends (measured as economic globalization) and the relative awareness of workplace psychosocial stressors, b) the prospective association between workplace psychosocial stressors (measured as job strain, job control and job psychological demands) and 10 measures cognitive decline using data from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring Cohort, and c) the international comparative psychometric evaluation the i) all items ii) the Researcher Version and iii) the User Version of the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0 using pilot data from Korea, China, Australia and Germany. The results in study (a) showed least developed countries are lagging behind in awareness of workplace psychosocial stressors although industrialization in increasing at a faster pace. Study (b) resulted in a negative association between job strain, job control and job demand independently and new learning and memory especially amongst the middle aged. There was some interaction effect by ApoE4 genotype and some of the associations. For study (c), there was adequate reliability, construct and cross-sectional predictive validity among the new and recommended Researcher and User Versions of the JCQ2.0. This study concluded that although the awareness of workplace psychosocial stressors is especially low at the least developed countries and workplace stress measured using the JCQ has a negative prospective association with chronic diseases such as cognitive decline (a prodromal stage of dementia), the JCQ 2.0 can however be used to accurately measure and quantify workplace psychosocial stressors. This study has generated a new context for the debate on workplace social policies on the influence of organizational and social aspects of the workplace.