Validating abbreviated measures of effort-reward imbalance at work in European cohort studies: the IPD-Work consortium.

Johannes Siegrist (1) , Nico Dragano (1) , Solja T Nyberg (2) , Thorsten Lunau (3) , Lars Alfredsson (4) , Raimund Erbel (5) , Göran Fahlén (6) , Marcel Goldberg (7) , Karl-Heinz Jöckel (3) , Anders Knutsson (8) , Constanze Leineweber (9) , Linda L Magnusson Hanson (9) , Maria Nordin (10) , Reiner Rugulies (11, 12) , Jürgen Schupp (13) , Archana Singh-Manoux (14, 7) , Töres Theorell (9) , Gert G Wagner (13, 15) , Hugo Westerlund (14) , Marie Zins (7) , Katriina Heikkilä (2) , Eleonor I Fransson (16, 17) , Mika Kivimäki (2, 14)

1 Department of Medical Sociology
2 Finnish Institute of Occupational Health
3 Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology
4 Institute of Environmental Medicine
5 Department of cardiology
6 The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools, Härnösand, Sweden
7 CESP - Centre de recherche en épidémiologie et santé des populations
8 Department of Health Sciences
9 Stress Research Institute
10 Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Occupational and Environmental Medicine
11 Department of Public Health [Copenhagen]
12 National Research Centre for the Working Environment
13 German Institute for Economic Research Berlin
14 Department of Epidemiology and Public Health
15 Max Planck Institute for Human Development
16 Institute of Environmental Medicine
17 School of Health Science

Effort-reward imbalance (ERI) is an established conceptualisation of work stress. Although a validated effort-reward questionnaire is available for public use, many epidemiological studies adopt shortened scales and proxy measures. To examine the agreement between different abbreviated measures and the original instrument, we compared different versions of the effort-reward scales available in 15 European cohort studies participating in the IPD-Work (Individual-participant-data meta-analysis in working populations) consortium. Five of the 15 studies provide information on the original ('complete') scales measuring 'effort' and 'reward', whereas the 10 remaining studies used 'partial' scales. To compare different versions of the ERI scales, we analyse individual-level data from 31,790 participants from the five studies with complete scales. Pearson's correlation between partial and complete scales was very high in case of 'effort' (where 2 out of 3 items were used) and very high or high in case of 'reward', if at least 4 items (out of 7) were included. Reward scales composed of 3 items revealed good to satisfactory agreement, and in one case, a reward scale consisting of 2 items only demonstrated a modest, but still acceptable degree of agreement. Sensitivity and specificity of a composite measure, the ratio of effort and reward, comparing partial versus complete scales ranged between 59-93 and 85-99 %, respectively. Complete and partial scales were strongly associated with poor self-rated health. Our results support the notion that short proxy measures or partial versions of the original scales can be used to assess effort-reward imbalance.

Mots clés: Male; Job Satisfaction; Humans; Internal-External Control; Adult; Cohort Studies; Statistical; Psychological/epidemiology Stress; Psychological/psychology; Workload/psychology; Female; Questionnaires; Reward; Self Report; Stress; Employment/psychology; Europe/epidemiology; Factor Analysis; Psychometrics/standards; Psychometrics/instrumentation; Occupational Health/statistics & numerical data; Middle Aged

Domaines: Santé publique et épidémiologie

Johannes Siegrist, Nico Dragano, Solja T Nyberg, Thorsten Lunau, Lars Alfredsson, et al.. Validating abbreviated measures of effort-reward imbalance at work in European cohort studies: the IPD-Work consortium.. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2014, 87 (3), pp.249-56. ⟨10.1007/s00420-013-0855-z⟩. ⟨inserm-01153190⟩