Negative Working Conditions and Health Across the Career

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的目标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核心特征，它提供经济支持，也是获得尊重和认同的来源，但消极的工作条件，包括工作压力（高要求与低控制相结合）、工作不安全感和失业，以及工作满意度低，都与健康状况不佳有关。然而，在职业生涯的某一点上，这些多重暴露的聚类并没有得到广泛的探索，尽管每一种就业情况都可能使工人暴露于一系列这样的社会心理压力源。此外，尽管科学界对整个生命过程中累积的不利条件越来越感兴趣，但在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为人所知。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较有利地位的工人的健康轨迹不同。利用纵向美国人改变生活（ACL）和美国中年（MIDUS）研究中具有全国代表性的美国工人样本，我们将探讨以下具体目标：(1)探索个体在工作中经历多种消极工作条件聚类的程度，并确定个体面临最大风险的特征；(2)研究工人如何通过职业生涯，积累对消极工作条件的暴露；(3)评估生命过程中对消极工作条件的暴露是否以及如何与自评健康和抑郁症状的轨迹相关。项目反应理论（IRT）模型将用于在给定的调查波中产生捕获工作紧张，工作不安全感和低工作满意度联合暴露的连续测量，并将这些暴露测量的线性个人成长模型与健康的线性个人成长模型联系起来。如果工作场所政策或干预措施认识到工人面临的全部社会心理负担，以及最脆弱的工人群体，就有可能取得更大的成功。

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.