著者
Akizumi Tsutsumi Akihito Shimazu Hisashi Eguchi Akiomi Inoue Norito Kawakami
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.60, no.1, pp.55-63, 2018-01-20 (Released:2018-01-25)
参考文献数
19
被引用文献数
46

Objectives: On December 1, 2015, the Japanese government launched the Stress Check Program, a new occupational health policy to screen employees for high psychosocial stress in the workplace. As only weak evidence exists for the effectiveness of the program, we sought to estimate the risk of stress-associated long-term sickness absence as defined in the program manual. Methods: Participants were 7356 male and 7362 female employees in a financial service company who completed the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ). We followed them for 1 year and used company records to identify employees with sickness absence of 1 month or longer. We defined high-risk employees using the BJSQ and criteria recommended by the program manual. We used the Cox proportional regression model to evaluate the prospective association between stress and long-term sickness absence. Results: During the follow-up period, we identified 34 male and 35 female employees who took long-term sickness absence. After adjustment for age, length of service, job type, position, and post-examination interview, hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) for incident long-term sickness absence in high-stress employees were 6.59 (3.04-14.25) for men and 2.77 (1.32-5.83) for women. The corresponding population attributable risks for high stress were 23.8% (10.3-42.6) for men and 21.0% (4.6-42.1) for women. Conclusions: During the 1-year follow-up, employees identified as high stress (as defined by the Stress Check Program manual) had significantly elevated risks for long-term sickness absence.
著者
Hisashi Eguchi Akihito Shimazu Arnold B. Bakker Maria Tims Kimika Kamiyama Yujiro Hara Katsuyuki Namba Akiomi Inoue Masakatsu Ono Norito Kawakami
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.58, no.3, pp.231-240, 2016-05-20 (Released:2016-06-16)
参考文献数
35
被引用文献数
15

Objectives: The aim of this study was to validate the Japanese version of the job crafting scale (JCS-J). JCS measures four independent job crafting dimensions, namely increasing structural job resources, decreasing hindering job demands, increasing social job resources, and increasing challenging job demands. Methods: The translated and back-translated JCS-J questionnaires were administered online to 972 employees of a Japanese manufacturing company. The data were then divided into independent explorative and confirmative samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to evaluate the factorial validity of JCS-J. The relationship with potential consequences of job crafting (e.g., job demands, job resources, and psychological well-being) was investigated to evaluate construct validity. Internal consistency was examined to evaluate the reliability of the four JCSs. Results: An exploratory factor analysis extracted a five-factor solution. Decreasing hindering job demands was further split into two separate dimensions supporting a five- rather than four-factor structure. A series of confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the modified five-factor model that allows covariance between items fits the data best. Construct validity was generally supported by the expected correlations of each job crafting dimension with each corresponding job resource (+), job demand (+), and psychological well-being (+). Cronbach's α coefficient was sufficient for each of the four dimensions of job crafting (α ranged between 0.76 and 0.90). Conclusions: This study confirmed that JCS-J is an adequate measure of job crafting that can be used in the Japanese context.
著者
Kazuhiro WATANABE Kotaro IMAMURA Akiomi INOUE Yasumasa OTSUKA Akihito SHIMAZU Hisashi EGUCHI Hidehiko ADACHI Asuka SAKURAYA Yuka KOBAYASHI Hideaki ARIMA Norito KAWAKAMI
出版者
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health
雑誌
Industrial Health (ISSN:00198366)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.58, no.2, pp.107-131, 2020 (Released:2020-04-02)
参考文献数
58
被引用文献数
5 9

Although the eudemonic perspective seems to be a promising in considering vocational identity among working population, well-being at work has been discussed primarily in terms of subjective/hedonic well-being. This study aimed to develop a new tool to measure eudemonic well-being at work (The University of Tokyo Occupational Mental Health [TOMH] well-being 24 scale)and investigate its validity in a collectivist culture. Two online surveys were conducted with a total of 1,760 workers in Japan. We created 89 potential items from existing scales. An exploratory factor analysis indicated eight factors for the dimensions of measurement. After item selection based on item response theory, the factor structure with three items from each of the eight dimensions indicated an excellent fit for another sample. Cronbach’s α and intra-class coefficients ranged from 0.671 to 0.845. The scores of the tool were more strongly associated with subjective well-being in the work context rather than well-being in general. In addition, the participants in the group demonstrating a higher risk for mental illness and a more stressful work environment indicated significantly lower scores, even after adjusting for general eudemonic well-being. The new measurement may be useful both for academic and practical applications for measuring eudemonic well-being at work, independent from general eudemonic well-being.
著者
Kotaro Imamura Yumi Asai Kazuhiro Watanabe Akizumi Tsutsumi Akihito Shimazu Akiomi Inoue Hisanori Hiro Yuko Odagiri Toru Yoshikawa Etsuko Yoshikawa Norito Kawakami
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.60, no.4, pp.298-306, 2018-07-20 (Released:2018-07-25)
参考文献数
29
被引用文献数
16

Objectives: This retrospective cohort study evaluated the impact of the Stress Check Program, a recently introduced national policy and program aimed at reducing psychological distress among Japanese workers. Methods: A baseline survey was conducted from November 2015 to February 2016, the period when Japan began enforcing the Stress Check Program. A one-year follow-up survey was conducted in December 2016. In the follow-up survey, two exposure variables were collected: having taken the annual stress survey, and experiencing an improvement in the psychosocial work environment. Psychological distress was assessed using the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ) at baseline and 1-year follow-up. The two exposure variables were used to define four groups: "Neither", "Stress survey (SS) only", "Psychosocial work environment improvement (WI) only", and "Both". BJSQ results were analyzed using repeated measures general linear modeling (GLM). Results: The study included 2,492 participants: 1,342 in the "Neither" group, 1,009 in the "SS only" group, 76 in the "WI only" group, and 65 in the "Both" group. Overall time-group interaction effects were not significant. The "Both" group showed significantly greater improvements in psychological distress than the "Neither" group (p = 0.02) at the 1-year follow-up, although the effect size was small (d = -0.14). Conclusions: Combination of the annual stress survey and improvement in psychosocial work environment may have been effective in reducing psychological distress in workers, although the effect size was small.
著者
Akiomi Inoue Norito Kawakami Kanami Tsuno Kimiko Tomioka Mayuko Nakanishi
出版者
(公社)日本産業衛生学会
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
pp.12-0131-OA, (Released:2013-01-18)
被引用文献数
7 20

Objectives: Several European studies showed that low organizational justice (i.e., procedural justice and interactional justice) was associated with major depressive disorders. In these studies, however, the diagnosis of major depressive disorders may be underestimated because they identified only individuals who visited a doctor and received a diagnosis. Moreover, these studies did not consider neurotic personality traits, which can affect the occurrence of major depressive disorders. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the cross-sectional association of organizational justice with major depressive episodes in the past 12 months more precisely in Japanese employees. Methods: A total of 425 males and 708 females from five branches of a manufacturing company in Japan completed self-administered questionnaires measuring organizational justice, other job stressors (i.e., job strain, social support at work, and effort-reward imbalance), neuroticism, and demographic characteristics. A web-based self-administered version of the computerized Composite International Diagnostic Interview Version 3.0 (CIDI 3.0) was used to assess major depressive episodes. Logistic regression analyses were conducted. Results: In the univariate analysis, low procedural justice and low interactional justice were significantly associated with major depressive episodes in the past 12 months. After adjusting for other job stressors and demographic characteristics, these associations were significant for interactional justice but not for procedural justice. The moderating effect of neuroticism on the association of organizational justice with major depressive episodes in the past 12 months was not significant. Conclusions: Low interactional justice may be associated with major depressive disorders regardless of other job stressors and neurotic personality traits.
著者
Akiomi Inoue Yuko Kachi Hisashi Eguchi Akihito Shimazu Norito Kawakami Akizumi Tsutsumi
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Environmental and Occupational Health Practice (ISSN:24344931)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.2, no.1, pp.2020-0002-OA, 2020 (Released:2020-06-30)
参考文献数
35

Objectives: We prospectively examined the combined effect of high stress (i.e., being under great work-related stress), as defined in the Japanese Stress Check Program manual using the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ), and job dissatisfaction on long-term sickness absence lasting 1 month or more. Methods: Participants were 7,343 male and 7,344 female financial service company employees who completed the BJSQ. We obtained personnel records covering a 1-year period to identify employees with long-term sickness absence, which was treated as a dichotomous variable. Participants were classified into four groups (high-stress+dissatisfied, high-stress+satisfied, not high-stress+dissatisfied, and not high-stress+satisfied groups) to calculate the hazard ratios (HRs) of long-term sickness absence for these groups using Cox’s proportional hazard regression analysis. Furthermore, to examine whether the combined effect of high stress and job dissatisfaction is synergistic or additive, we calculated relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI), attributable proportion due to interaction (AP), synergy index (SI), and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results: After adjustment for covariates, the HR of long-term sickness absence was highest among the high-stress+dissatisfied group (HR 6.49; 95% CI, 3.42–12.3) followed by the high-stress+satisfied group (HR 5.01; 95% CI, 1.91–13.1). The combined effect of high stress and job dissatisfaction was additive (95% CIs of RERI and AP included 0 and that of SI included 1). Conclusions: Our findings suggest incorporating high stress with job dissatisfaction improves the predictability of long-term sickness absence. However, employees reporting high stress but satisfaction with their jobs may still at increased risk of developing long-term sickness absence.
著者
Akiomi Inoue Norito Kawakami Hisashi Eguchi Akizumi Tsutsumi
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.58, no.5, pp.460-469, 2016-09-20 (Released:2016-09-30)
参考文献数
40
被引用文献数
11

Objectives: The present study aimed to examine the buffering effect of workplace social capital (WSC) on the association of job insecurity with psychological distress in Japanese employees. Methods: 2,971 employees from two factories of a manufacturing company in Japan completed a self-administered questionnaire including the scales on job insecurity, WSC, psychological distress, demographic and occupational characteristics, and quantitative workload. Using psychological distress (defined as a total score of the K6 scale ≥5) as a dependent variable, multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted. In a series of analyses, interaction term of job insecurity×WSC was included in the model. Results: After adjusting for demographic and occupational characteristics as well as for quantitative workload and interaction effect of quantitative workload×WSC, high job insecurity and low WSC were significantly associated with psychological distress. Furthermore, a significant interaction effect of job insecurity×WSC was observed. Specifically, the association of job insecurity with psychological distress was greater among those who perceived lower levels of WSC (prevalence odds ratio=3.79 [95% confidence interval=2.70-5.32] for high vs. low job insecurity subgroup) than among those who perceived higher levels of WSC (prevalence odds ratio=2.96 [95% confidence interval=2.19-4.01] for high vs. low job insecurity subgroup). These findings were replicated among permanent male employees in the gender-stratified analyses. Conclusions: The present study suggests that WSC has a buffering effect on the association of job insecurity with psychological distress at least among Japanese permanent male employees.
著者
Kanami Tsuno Norito Kawakami Akihito Shimazu Kyoko Shimada Akiomi Inoue Michael P. Leiter
出版者
Japan Society for Occupational Health
雑誌
Journal of Occupational Health (ISSN:13419145)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.59, no.3, pp.237-246, 2017-05-20 (Released:2017-05-25)
参考文献数
33
被引用文献数
25

Objectives: Although incivility is a common interpersonal mistreatment and associated with poor mental health, there are few studies about it in Asian countries. The aim of this study was to develop the Japanese version of the modified Work Incivility Scale (J-MWIS), investigate its reliability and validity, and reveal the prevalence of incivility among Japanese employees in comparison with data on Canadian employees. Methods: A total of 2,191 Japanese and 1,071 Canadian employees were surveyed, using either the J-MWIS or MWIS. Japanese employees additionally answered questions on civility, worksite social support, workplace bullying, psychological distress, intention to leave, and work engagement to investigate construct validity. Results: At least one form of workplace incivility was experienced by both Japanese (52.3%) and Canadian (86.0%) employees in the previous month. Internal consistency reliability of the J-MWIS was acceptable (α=0.71-0.81), and correlation analyses also confirmed its construct validity as expected. Workplace incivility was associated with lower workgroup civility, lower supervisor and coworker support, higher workplace bullying, higher psychological distress, higher intention to leave, and lower work engagement. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the original three-factor model (supervisor incivility, coworker incivility, and instigated incivility) fitted moderately in both Japan and Canada data, though the privacy/overfamiliarity factor was additionally extracted from exploratory factor analysis for the J-MWIS. Conclusions: The results of this study suggested that the J-MWIS has moderate internal consistency reliability and good construct validity.