| Abstract |
Background: A large part of a person's everyday life concerns work employment. Exposure to numerous psychosocial work factors, which define work quality, is probably associated to adverse consequences on the employee's physical and mental health.
Objective: The objective of this study is the measurement of two basic psychosocial work characteristics prevalence (job control and effort-reward imbalance) in Greek employees of aged 50-65 years and the investigation of their association with parameters of their physical and mental health.
Methods: We used data from the Greek sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE, Wave 1, release 2.3.0). This sample consists of 727 Greek employees of both genders, aged 50-65 years old. Data were collected through interviews which consisted in a computer assisted questionnaire (CAPI) completed by the researcher and a self-completed questionnaire (drop off). For the needs of our study, we used variables concerning sociodemographic data, health variables and work quality characteristics. Multivariate regression models were used to estimate the association between work characteristics and health, after adjustment for all possible confounders.
Results: According to the findings of our study, employees with effort-reward imbalance have greater odds of having poor physical and mental health (OR 1.74 95% CI 1.04-2.7 for chronic diseases, OR 1.62 95% CI 1.05-2.49 for health symptoms, OR 1.70 95%CI 1.04-2.79 for depressive symptoms). Employees with low job control present greater odds of developing chronic diseases (OR 1.69 95% CI 1.04-2.73). Finally, employees exposed both to low job control conditions and effort-reward imbalance present much greater odds of having poor physical and mental health than those exposed only to one of the two psychosocial work characteristics (OR 2.68 95% CI 1.37-5.26 for chronic diseases, OR 2.29 95% CI 1.27-4.14 for health symptoms, OR 2.49 95%CI 1.27-4.86 for depressive symptoms).
Conclusions: These findings suggest that effort-reward imbalance and low job control at work is negatively associated to physical and mental health. Further investigation is needed in order to design and implement intrusive measures to improve psychosocial working conditions. Key words: psychosocial work characteristics, quality work characteristics, physical health, mental health, job control, and effort-reward imbalance, job strain, depression, job stress models, self-reported health, job stress
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Ποιοτικά χαρακτηριστικά εργασίας και σχέση τους με το επίπεδο υγείας σε εργαζόμενους 50-65 ετών στην Ελλάδα
