Negative Working Conditions and Health Across the Career

描述(由申请者提供)：这项拟议的研究的目标是调查美国工人如何在工作中遇到多种负面经历，以及这些经历在职业生涯中的积累与他们的健康轨迹是如何关联的。有偿就业是大多数成年人生活的中心特征，提供经济维持以及尊重和认同的来源，但负面的工作条件，包括工作压力(高要求与低控制力相结合)、工作不安全和失业以及低工作满意度与健康状况不佳有关。然而，尽管每一种就业情况都可能使工人暴露在一系列这样的心理社会压力之下，但这些多重暴露在职业生涯中的某个特定时间点的聚集还没有得到广泛的研究。此外，尽管科学上对整个生命过程中累积的不利条件越来越感兴趣，但人们对职业生涯中暴露于一系列负面工作条件的程度和性质，甚至比它们在任何给定时间点聚集的程度更不清楚。更好地了解工作中的负面接触与人口健康有关，因为这可能有助于解释为什么最初处于社会不利地位的工人的健康轨迹继续与处于更有利地位的工人的健康轨迹背道而驰。使用美国人改变生活(ACL)和美国中年(MIDUS)纵向研究中具有全国代表性的美国工人样本，我们将探索以下具体目标：(1)探索个人在工作中经历多种负面工作条件聚集的程度，并确定将个人置于最大风险中的特征，(2)检查工人如何在职业生涯中移动，积累对负面工作条件的暴露，以及(3)评估生命过程中暴露在负面工作条件下是否以及如何与自我评估的健康和抑郁症状的轨迹相关。项目反应理论(IRT)模型将被用来生成连续的测量，以捕捉在给定调查浪潮中工作压力、工作不安全感和低工作满意度的联合暴露，这些暴露测量的线性个人增长模型将被估计并与线性个人健康增长模型相关联。如果工作场所政策或干预措施认识到工人面临的全部心理社会负担，以及最脆弱的工人群体，他们可能会更成功。 公共卫生相关性：该项目与人口和行为科学处在研究健康和人口过程，特别是劳动力参与方面的持续使命是一致的。该项目对公共卫生具有重要影响。它将提供关于心理社会工作场所危险在某个时间点和整个职业生涯中聚集的新信息，以及它们与自我评估的健康和抑郁症状的轨迹的关联。这项拟议的研究还将审查这些负面工作条件对于解释或增加美国人一生中的健康差距的重要性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the proposed research is to examine how workers in the United States encounter multiple negative experiences at work, and how the accumulation of these experiences over the career is associated with their health trajectories. Paid employment is a central feature of most adults' lives, providing economic sustenance as well as a source of esteem and identity, but negative working conditions including job strain (high demands combined with low control), job insecurity and unemployment, and low job satisfaction have been linked to poor health. However, the clustering of these multiple exposures at a given point in the career has not been extensively explored, though every employment situation potentially exposes a worker to a range of such psychosocial stressors. Moreover, despite growing scientific interest in cumulative disadvantage across the life course, the extent and nature of exposure to an array of negative working conditions over the career is even less well understood than the extent to which they cluster at any given time point. A better understanding of negative exposures at work is relevant to population health because it may help to explain why the health trajectories of initially socially-disadvantaged workers continue to diverge from those of their more-advantaged counterparts. Using nationally-representative samples of U.S. workers from the longitudinal Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) and Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) studies, we will explore the following specific aims: (1) explore the extent to which individuals experience the clustering of multiple negative working conditions in their jobs, and identify characteristics that put individuals at greatest risk, (2) examine how workers move through careers, accumulating exposure to negative working conditions, and (3) assess whether and how life course exposure to negative working conditions is related to trajectories of self-rated health and depressive symptoms. Item Response Theory (IRT) models will be used to generate continuous measures capturing joint exposure to job strain, job insecurity, and low job satisfaction at a given survey wave, and linear individual growth models of these exposure measures will be estimated and linked to linear individual growth models of health. Workplace policy or interventions potentially could be more successful if they recognized the total psychosocial burdens workers face, and the groups of workers who are most vulnerable. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This project is consistent with the continuing mission of the Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch (DBSB) of NICHD with respect to research on the intersection of health and demographic processes, specifically labor force participation. This project has important implications for public health. It will provide new information about the clustering of psychosocial workplace hazards at one point in time and over the career, and about their association with trajectories of self-rated health and depressive symptoms. The proposed research will also examine the importance of these negative working conditions for explaining or increasing health disparities over the life course in the United States.