2015, Article / Letter to editor (BMC Public Health, vol. 15, (2015), pp. 551)BACKGROUND: Most validated sustainable employability questionnaires are extensive and difficult to obtain. Our objective was to develop a usable and valid tool, a Vitality Scan, to determine possible signs of stagnation in one's functioning related to sustainable employability and to establish the instrument's internal consistency and construct validity. METHODS: A literature review was performed and expert input was obtained to develop an online survey of 31 items. A sample of 1722 Dutch employees was recruited. Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach's alpha. The underlying theoretical concepts were extracted by factor analysis using a principal component method. For construct validity, a priori hypotheses were defined for expected differences between known subgroups: 1) older workers would report more stagnation than younger workers, and 2) less educated workers would report more problems than the highly educated ones. Both hypotheses were statistically tested using ANOVA. RESULTS: Internal consistency measures and factor analysis resulted in five subscales with acceptable to good reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.72-0.87). These subscales included: balance and competence, motivation and involvement, resilience, mental and physical health, and social support at work. Three items were removed following these analyses. In accordance with our a priori hypothesis 1, the ANOVA showed that older workers reported the most problems, while younger workers reported the least problems. However, hypothesis 2 was not confirmed: no significant differences were found for education level. CONCLUSIONS: The developed Vitality Scan - with the 28 remaining items - showed good measurement properties. It is applicable as a user-friendly, evaluative instrument for worker's sustainable employability. The scan's value for determining whether or not the employee is at risk for a decrease in functioning during present and future work, should be further tested.
1998, Article / Letter to editor (International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, vol. 71, iss. 8, (1998), pp. 537-542)OBJECTIVES: To fit a model which describes the complex interaction between various work-related factors and both musculoskeletal and psychosomatic complaints of nurses simultaneously and to compare the results with those of two LISREL models, in which the health outcome variables are analyzed separately in terms of their correlation with the same set of work-related factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nurses (n=718) working in four Dutch nursing homes completed a questionnaire about work-related factors and musculoskeletal and psychosomatic complaints (response 81%). LISREL was used to describe and analyse the models. RESULTS: The full model had a reasonable overall fit. The strongest (and statistically significant) correlations were found between work postures and musculoskeletal complaints and between psychosocial work demands and psychosomatic complaints. In the two single models, health outcomes showed statistically significant correlations with the same work-related factors as they did in the full model. The full model could be slightly improved when the variable somatized complaints (e.g., dizzyness, headache) was related both to musculoskeletal complaints and to psychosomatic complaints. CONCLUSIONS: Although a model that simultaneously describes more dependent variables appears to provide a better approximation of the complexity of the actual relationship between work-related factors and health effects, the models in which only one health outcome is studied seem to give a proper description of the data at hand. This is an important finding because these single health outcome models resemble the usual analysis strategy by means of standard regression analysis. The adapted version of the full model suggests that musculoskeletal complaints of nurses can partly be understood as non-specific health complaints.