Negative Working Conditions and Health Across the Career

该研究的目的是研究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如何与他们的健康轨迹相关联。有偿就业是大多数成年人生活的一个中心特征，提供经济生计以及尊重和身份的来源，但消极的工作条件，包括工作压力（高要求加上低控制）、工作不安全和失业以及工作满意度低，都与健康状况不佳有关。然而，在职业生涯中的一个特定点上，这些多重暴露的集群还没有得到广泛的探讨，尽管每一种就业情况都可能使工人暴露于一系列这样的心理社会压力。此外，尽管科学界对整个生命过程中累积的不利因素越来越感兴趣，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的了解，甚至不如对它们在任何特定时间点聚集的程度的了解。更好地了解工作中的负面暴露与人口健康有关，因为它可能有助于解释为什么最初处于社会弱势的工人的健康轨迹继续与他们的更健康的同行不同。使用来自纵向美国人改变生活（ACL）和美国中年人（MIDUS）研究的美国工人的全国代表性样本，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，并确定使个人处于最大风险的特征，（2）研究工人如何在职业生涯中发展，积累负面工作条件的暴露，（3）评估生活过程中暴露于负面工作条件是否以及如何与自测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措施，捕捉联合暴露于工作压力，工作不安全感，在给定的调查波和低工作满意度，这些暴露措施的线性个人增长模型将被估计和链接到线性个人健康增长模型。如果工作场所的政策或干预措施认识到工人所面临的总体心理社会负担以及最脆弱的工人群体，它们可能会更成功。 公共卫生相关性：该项目与NICHD人口和行为科学分支（DBSB）在研究健康和人口过程的交叉点，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意义。它将提供新的信息，关于在一个时间点和职业生涯中的心理社会工作场所危险的聚类，以及它们与自测健康和抑郁症状的轨迹的关联。这项拟议中的研究还将研究这些负面工作条件对解释或增加美国人一生中健康差距的重要性。

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.