• Project number: F 2407
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Completed Project

Description:

The Job Demands Resources (JDR) models, a concept well established in psychosocial research, suggests that demands and resources are differentially important for health depending on the specific occupation considered, and that these job-specific demands and resources interact accordingly (Bakker and Demerouti 2007).

Partly inspired by Goldthorpe's employment relation theory (2000) we investigate whether specific psychosocial demands and resources differentially predict poor mental health (ie. burnout and depressive symptoms) in various occupational settings. Among manual workers we hypothesize that the demands "work pace" on the one hand and the resource "control" on the other hand interact as risk factors for mental health. Regarding office workers, we hypothesize that the demand "amount of work" on the one hand and the resources "social support from colleagues" and "quality of leadership" on the other hand interact as risk factors for mental health. Regarding workers dealing with other people (e.g. customers, students, patients), we hypothesize that the demand "being subjected to offensive behaviour" on the one hand and the resources "social support from colleagues" and "quality of leadership" on the other hand interact as risk factors for mental health.

These hypotheses will be tested on data from the cross-sectional S-MGA study and the longitudinal lidA study with 4,500 and 4,000 employees, respectively. In both datasets, information on mental health, demands, resources and occupational sector are available. By means of linear regressions, possible interactions will be investigated.