Developing a short standard questionnaire for assessing work organization hazards: the Healthy Work Survey (HWS)

BACKGROUND: At present, no short standard questionnaire exists for assessing and comparing major work organization hazards in the workplaces of the United States. METHODS: We conducted a series of psychometric tests (content validity, factor analysis, differential-item functioning analysis, reliability, and concurrent validity) to validate and identify core items and scales for major work organization hazards using the data from the 2002–2014 General Social Surveys (GSSs), including the Quality of Worklife (QWL) questionnaire. In addition, an extensive literature review was undertaken to find other major work organization hazards which were not addressed in the GSS. RESULTS: Although the overall validity of the GSS-QWL questionnaire was satisfactory in the psychometric tests, some GSS-QWL items of work-family conflict, psychological job demands, job insecurity, use of skills on the job, and safety climate scales appeared to be weak. In the end, 33 questions (31 GSS-QWL and 2 GSS) were chosen as the least, but best validated core questions and included in a new short standard questionnaire (called the Healthy Work Survey [HWS]). And their national norms were established for comparisons. Furthermore, based on the literature review, fifteen more questions for assessing other significant work organization hazards (e.g., lack of scheduling control, emotional demands, electronic surveillance, wage theft) were included in the new questionnaire. Thus, the HWS includes 48 questions in total for assessing traditional and emerging work organization hazards, which covers seven theoretical domains: work schedule/arrangement, control, support, reward, demands, safety, and justice. CONCLUSIONS: The HWS is a short standard questionnaire for assessing work organization hazards which can be used as a first step toward the risk management of major work organization hazards in the workplaces of the US.