Boredom and engagement at work: do they have different antecedents and consequences?

This study aimed to demonstrate the empirical distinctiveness of boredom at work and work engagement in relation to their potential antecedents (job demands and job resources) and consequences (psychological distress and turnover intention) based on the Job Demands-Resources model. A three-wave longitudinal survey was conducted among registered monitors of an Internet survey company in Japan. The questionnaire included scales for boredom at work, work engagement, psychological distress, and turnover intention as well as participants' job characteristics and demographic variables. The hypothesized model was evaluated via structural equation modeling with 1,019 participants who were employed full-time. As expected, boredom at work was negatively associated with quantitative job demands and job resources and positively associated with psychological distress and turnover intention. In contrast, work engagement was positively associated with job resources and negatively associated with turnover intention. Thus, boredom at work and work engagement had different potential antecedents and were inversely related to employee well-being and organizational outcomes. However, contrary to expectations, qualitative job demands were not significantly associated with boredom at work. Further investigation is needed to understand the relationship between boredom and qualitative job demands, which require sustained cognitive load and the use of higher skills.

[An item response model for the experimental design].

In recent years, we see many examples of applying item response theory to psychological questionnaires. There are various conditions under which psychological tests are administered. Often, we are interested in the subjects' latent traits in the context of experimental design. In that case, we might want to know the effects of the experimental factors on the item parameters. In this study, we proposed an item response model in which items could be classified by some qualitative factors as in the situations where the items are administered under several different experimental conditions. The model's item parameters were linearly structured as in the general linear model. Then, we showed an example of analysis using an actual data set which was collected under four conditions, where the latent trait in question was "tension."

[Estimation of Cronbach's alpha coefficient in the context of item response theory].

Cronbach's alpha coefficient is an index of reliability for the total score of a set of measurements. The alpha takes a value of 1.0 when the total score variance is perfectly attributable to the common factors running through the test items. In this research, a method of estimating Cronbach's coefficient alpha is proposed for the case where the parameters of dichotomous item response model are known and the ability distribution of subjects is given. In addition, the case of polytomous response model where the item parameters are estimated by graded response model (Samejima, 1969) is also considered, and a method of estimating the alpha coefficient is proposed for that case.