More on the Job Content Questionnaire

This is a questionnaire-based instrument designed to measure the "content" of a respondent's work tasks in a general manner which is applicable to all jobs and job holders in the U.S. The questionnaire scalsed have been used to predict job related stress and coronary heart disease in the U.S. and Sweden. The best known scales are used to measure the high demand/low control model of job strain development, but over twenty other aspects of work and the individual are assessed. The scales are also relevant for studies of worker motivation, job satisfaction, absenteeism and labor turnover.

The questionnaire can be characterized as focusing on the psychological and social structure of the work situation - issues relevant to work demands, decision making opportunities, social interaction, etc. Physical aspects of work are also measured but in a very general manner. Several scales measuring psycho-social strain "outcomes" are also included. No personality scales or measures of non-job stressors are inlcuded; two areas in which the user may want to supplement our instrument.

The design of the new JCQ instrument in 1984 focused on a very short, efficient questionnaire which could be self-administered in fifteen minutes, with minimal subject guidance. The JCQ was originally constructed for the Framingham Offspring Study developed for the US NHLBI survey and the instrument authors were well aware of the limitations posed by research teams in nation survey designs and of other researchers adopting question sets not of their own design- thus instrument length was a major design criteria.

Most of the scales are nationally standardizable, allowing users involved in small population or single plant studies to compare their findings to national averages on the scales (broken down by sex and occupation/industry). The nationally standardizability is due to the fact that a "core" of the questions replicate the U.S. Department of Labor's National Quality of Employment Survey of 1969, 1972, and 1977 (administered by the University of Michigan, which we in turn have statistically adjusted to allow combining the three surveys, n=4,500 total for our reference base). Another advantage of the instrument is that its scales are also used in our data base linkage system (using job title) through which job content scores can be associated with health and productivity outcomes in national or company data bases already in existence (such as U.S. Census, Commerce or NCHS data). This assures the continued validation of the instrument's scales in predicting a broad range of outcome variables.

Furthermore, we have designed this questionnaire as the "Reference Base" of a two part "umbrella" strategy for collecting job data. The users are encouraged to develop the second part themselves: More situation-specific supplementary scales ("under the Job Content Scale umbrella") to measure the detailed problems that are important in the surveyed work site. These new scales can then be correlated to our nationally standardized scales.