Comparing perceived psychosocial working conditions of nurses and physicians in two university hospitals in Germany with other German professionals - feasibility of scale conversion between two versions of the German Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ)

BACKGROUND: In 2015, the WorkSafeMed study assessed, amongst others, perceived psychosocial working conditions in nurses (n = 567) and physicians (n = 381) from two German university hospitals using scales from the German standard version of the COPSOQ (Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire). This standard version is based on the international COPSOQ I and II. Since 2017, a further developed version of the German COPSOQ (G-COPSOQ III) has been available and data from this version are stored in the German COPSOQ database. The aim of the present study was to compare scales depicting perceived psychosocial workloads and strain in hospital staff from the WorkSafeMed study with reference data (hospital care nurses, general hospital physicians, reference values across all occupations) from the German COPSOQ database (2012–2017). As preliminary work, we explored whether a conversion of COPSOQ scales based on data from the WorkSafeMed study to the G-COPSOQ III scales was possible. METHODS: We applied a multistep approach for conversion. First, we compared 17 COPSOQ scales used in the WorkSafeMed study with the corresponding scales from the G-COPSOQ III according to content and then decided if a conversion was appropriate. If possible, we converted WorkSafeMed scales - the converted scales comprised the same content and number of items as in G-COPSOQ III. An explorative statistical analysis for each original and converted WorkSafeMed scale followed detecting possible statistical and relevant differences between the scales. We then compared converted WorkSafeMed scales with reference data from the German COPSOQ database. RESULTS: Based on the comparison undertaken according to content, a conversion was possible for 16 scales. Using the data from the WorkSafeMed study, the statistical analysis showed only differences between original and converted COPSOQ scales “control over working time” (mean 40.2 vs. 51.8, d(Cohen) = 0.56) and “social relations” (mean 55.6 vs. 41.8, d(Cohen) = − 0.55). Comparing converted WorkSafeMed scales with reference data revealed higher values for “quantitative demands”, “work-privacy-conflict”, and “job satisfaction” in the WorkSafeMed sample. CONCLUSIONS: The conversion of WorkSafeMed scales was appropriate, allowed a comparison with three reference values in the German COPSOQ database and revealed some implications for improving psychosocial working conditions of nurses and physicians in university hospitals in Germany.