ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study identified perceived employability trajectories and their associations with sleeping difficulties and depressive symptoms over time. METHODS: The sample was part of the Swedish Longitudinal Survey on Health from 2008 to 2014 (n=4,583). RESULTS: Two stable trajectories (high and low perceived employability over time) and three trajectories with changes (increasing, decreasing, and V-shaped perceived employability over time) were identified. Workers with stable low perceived employability reported more sleeping difficulties and depressive symptoms than those who perceived high or increasing employability. CONCLUSION: Perceived employability is a rather stable personal resource, which is associated with well-being over time. However, changes in perceived employability do not seem to be echoed in well-being, at least not as immediately as theoretically expected.
Subject(s)
Depression/epidemiology , Depression/psychology , Employment/psychology , Self Concept , Sleep Wake Disorders/epidemiology , Sleep Wake Disorders/psychology , Adult , Aged , Analysis of Variance , Cohort Studies , Female , Humans , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Middle Aged , Perception , Surveys and Questionnaires , Sweden/epidemiology , Young AdultABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: There are inherent methodological challenges in the measurement of mental health problems in longitudinal research. There is constant development in definitions, taxonomies and demands concerning the properties of mental health measurements. The aim of this paper was to construct composite measures of mental health problems (according to today's standard) from single questionnaire items devised in the early 1980s, and to evaluate their internal consistency and factorial invariance across the life course using the Northern Swedish Cohort. METHODS: All pupils in the last year of compulsory school in Luleå in 1981 (n = 1083) form a prospective cohort study where the participants have been followed with questionnaires from the age of 16 (in 1981) until the age of 43 (in 2008). We created and tested the following composite measures from self-reports at each follow-up: depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, functional somatic symptoms, modified GHQ and positive health. Validity and internal consistency were tested by confirmatory factor analysis, including tests of factorial invariance over time. RESULTS: As an overall assessment, the results showed that the composite measures (based on more than 30-year-old single item questions) are likely to have acceptable factorial invariance as well as internal consistency over time. CONCLUSIONS: Testing the properties of the mental health measures used in older studies according to the standards of today is of great importance in longitudinal research. Our study demonstrates that composite measures of mental health problems can be constructed from single items which are more than 30 years old and that these measures seem to have the same factorial structure and internal consistency across a significant part of the life course. Thus, it can be possible to overcome some specific inherent methodological challenges in using historical data in longitudinal research.
Subject(s)
Anxiety/diagnosis , Depression/diagnosis , Mental Health/statistics & numerical data , Surveys and Questionnaires , Adolescent , Adult , Anxiety/psychology , Chi-Square Distribution , Depression/psychology , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Prospective Studies , Reproducibility of Results , Sensitivity and Specificity , Socioeconomic Factors , Sweden , Young AdultABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To clarify the role of perceived job insecurity and perceived employability in relation to psychological symptoms among permanent and temporary employees in two samples. Sample 1 was representative of the Finnish working population in 2008 (n = 4,330; Study 1). Sample 2 was collected among Finnish university personnel and in two waves (n = 1,212; Study 2). METHODS: Perceived job insecurity, perceived employability, and psychological symptoms were measured by questionnaires in both studies. Hypotheses were tested with regression analyses. RESULTS: The pattern of results was similar in the two samples. Perceived job insecurity was positively associated with psychological symptoms among permanent workers but not among temporary workers. No such differential relationships were observed for perceived employability, instead perceived employability was negatively associated with psychological symptoms among all respondents. Furthermore, perceived employability did not buffer the positive relation between perceived job insecurity and psychological symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge about the relationship between contract type and workers' well-being can be enhanced when the combined effects of contract type and job conditions are accounted for.
