title: The Gutenberg Health Study: measuring psychosocial factors at work and predicting health and work-related outcomes with the ERI and the COPSOQ questionnaire.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Several instruments have been developed to assess psychosocial workload. We compared two of these instruments, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) model and the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) with regard to congruent validity and internal validity.
  
  
  METHODS
  This analysis is based on a population-based sample of the baseline examination of 2,783 employees from the Gutenberg Health Study (GHS). About half of the participants completed the ERI questionnaire (n = 1,342), the other half completed the COPSOQ (n = 1,441). First, the two samples were compared and descriptive analyses were carried out calculating mean values for both instruments in general, then separately for age, gender and main occupational groups. Second, we analyzed the relationship between ERI and COPSOQ scales on the workplace situation and on the workplace outcomes: job satisfaction, general health, burnout, satisfaction with life, by applying stepwise logistic regression analysis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  For the majority of occupations, high effort as reflected by the ERI corresponded with high demands as reflected by the COPSOQ. Comparably, high reward (according to ERI) yielded a good agreement with high "influence and development" (according to COPSOQ). However, we could also find differences between ERI and COPSOQ concerning the intensity of psychosocial workload in some occupations (e.g., physicians/pharmacists or warehouse managers/warehousemen/transport workers). These differences point to differing theoretical concepts of ERI and COPSOQ. When the ability of ERI and COPSOQ was examined to determine the associations with health and work outcomes, burnout could be better predicted by the COPSOQ; this might be due to the fact that COPSOQ comprises the constructs "work-privacy conflict" and "emotional demand", which are closely related to burnout. However, methodological differences between these instruments limit their direct comparability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The ERI and COPSOQ instrument yielded similar results for most occupational groups. The slightly stronger association between psychosocial workload as assessed by COPSOQ and burnout might be explained by its broader approach. The ability of the ERI and COPSOQ instrument to reflect relevant risk factors for clinically manifest disorders (e.g., coronary heart disease) will be derived from subsequent prospective analyses of the GHS with the follow-up data.
authors.affiliation: FFAS, Freiburg Research Center for Occupational and Social Medicine, Bertoldstr, 27, D-79098 Freiburg, Germany. nuebling@ffas.de
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nuebling
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Seidler
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Garthus-Niegel
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Latza
authors.forename: Mandy
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Janice
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hegewald
authors.forename: Falk
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liebers
authors.forename: Sylvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jankowiak
authors.forename: Isabella
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zwiener
authors.forename: Philipp S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Wild
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Letzel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002055:Burnout, Professional / Q000209:etiology; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009790:Occupations / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012201:Reward; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology*