Quality of Worklife Questionnaire

Overview

In 2000, NIOSH entered into an interagency agreement with the National Science Foundation to add a special module to the 2002 General Social Survey to assess the quality of work life in America. The General Social Survey is a biannual, nationally representative, personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center and funded by the National Science Foundation. Using a small group process with internal and external expert teams, NIOSH selected 76 questions that dealt with a wide assortment of work organization issues, such as hours of work, workload, worker autonomy, layoffs and job security, job satisfaction/stress, and worker well-being. Half of the questions in the Quality of Worklife module were taken directly from the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey, allowing comparisons of worker responses over a 25-year period.

The primary goal of the Quality of Worklife module was to measure how work life and the work experience have changed since the earlier Quality of Employment Surveys, and establish benchmarks for future surveys. Secondary goals include measuring the relationship between job/organizational characteristics and worker health and safety, and identifying targets for health and safety preventive interventions.

The personal interview data were collected in the Fall/Winter of 2002 and the final dataset contains responses from 2,765 persons.

Categories and Constructs Measured

Job level (41 items)

Workload
           Autonomy
           Pay/pay equity
           Skill utilization
           Participation
           Job future
           Repetitive work
           Resource adequacy
           Reward/recognition
           Skill utilization
           Supervisory behavior
           Coworker relations
           Promotions 
           Variety
           Occupation
           Job tenure
           Training
           Layoffs
           Teamwork
           Role clarity
           Role conflict
           Staffing
           Safety & health
           Other 

Culture/climate (11 items)

           Safety climate
           Discrimination
           Harassment
           Respect
           Trust
           Mgt. relationship

Health Outcomes (9 items)

           Physical health
           Mental health
           Injuries

Other Outcomes (6 items)

           Performance
           Satisfaction
           Intent to leave
           Job commitment

Hours of work (6 items)

           Work at home
           Overtime
           Flexibility

Work/family (4 items)
Supervision (3 items)
Benefits (1 item)
Union (1 item)

Download the Questionnaire

Quality of Worklife Questionnaire
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