An International Comparative Reliability and Concurrent Validity Assessment of the Multi-Level Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0

Wilfred Agbenyikey (), Jian Li, Sung-Il Cho, Sarven S. McLinton, Maureen Dollard, Maren Formazin, Bongkyoo Choi, Irene Houtman and Robert Karasek
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Wilfred Agbenyikey: US Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Baltimore, MD 21244, USA
Jian Li: Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health and School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Sung-Il Cho: Department of Public Health Science, Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
Sarven S. McLinton: PSC Global Observatory, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Maureen Dollard: PSC Global Observatory, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Maren Formazin: Division “Work and Health”, Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), 10317 Berlin, Germany
Bongkyoo Choi: Center for Work and Health Research, Irvine, CA 92620, USA
Irene Houtman: TNO Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, 2333 BE Leiden, The Netherlands
Robert Karasek: Institute for Psychology, Copenhagen University, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark

IJERPH, 2025, vol. 22, issue 9, 1-29

Abstract: Background: This paper empirically tests the new multi-level Associationalist Demand Control (ADC) theory by applying the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0 that assesses both a wide range of task characteristics as well as work organizational and external-to-work psychosocial characteristics. Methods: The paper is based on four JCQ 2.0 pilot studies among 16,125 workers in Korea, China, Australia, and Germany. All pilots used the original JCQ task-level scales and then added newly developed proposed items and scales, evolving more comprehensive higher-level scales from pilot to pilot from 2005 to 2011. A brief review of the analytic process is presented, followed by an assessment of the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the final 25 multi-level JCQ 2.0 scales at the task, the organizational, and the external levels. Results: Adequate psychometric properties were established for the JCQ 2.0 pilot scales. The extended set of task-level scales was found to be robust across all samples; the new organizational scales mainly showed adequate internal consistency with α > 0.7 in Australia and Germany (tested only there) and were associated with relevant work- and health-related outcome measures as expected. Similarly, the external-to-work scales (tested only in Germany) had adequate Cronbach’s Alpha values and showed expected associations to relevant outcome scales. Conclusions: Although not all scales were available in all countries, overall, the results support the “functional similarity” of the major scale areas across the four pilot countries and support the underlying extensions of the Demand–Control theoretical constructs to the multi-level psychosocial work assessment for the promotion of workers’ health and wellbeing as suggested by the new ADC model.

Keywords: job content questionnaire; demand-control (DC) model; ADC model; health promotion; quantitative demands; decision latitude; multi-level; pilot studies; psychometric properties; psychosocial work assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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