Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure Psychosocial Work Stressors in Modern Working Environments.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE The rapid development of technology is changing working conditions of many employees. With this, appropriate measurement instruments to capture work-related psychosocial risks to create healthy working conditions are becoming more and more important. Therefore, we developed and validated a questionnaire to assess stressors in work settings which are characterized by a high degree of digitization. METHOD The validation was based on two independent studies with data collected in four subsamples. All participants were asked about their working conditions and health-related topics using online questionnaires. RESULTS The resulting 16-item questionnaire consists of five scales: work load, boundary permeability, participation, leader support, and usability. CONCLUSIONS The results show that the five identified stressors showed acceptable to good values with regard to reliability (internal consistencies, test-retest reliabilities, and interrater agreement) as well as (convergent and concurrent) validity.