MANAGING HEALTH INEQUALITIES AND SOCIAL POLICY

AHMADU M.T. 07986814

INTRODUCTION/MOTIVATION BACKGROUND LITERATURE REVIEW RESULTS CONCLUSION

Two-thirds of life of a worker is spent in the work place, hence conditions at work, which determine job satisfaction and it’s effect on health is an important area of study.

Basic theory by Bokemeier and lacy 1986 says that workers are satisfied if their jobs provide what they desire, and a concrete way is the amount and perceived adequacy of financial remuneration. Also others as described by Roy Walter, are; type of work, time and effort spent at work, reasonable degree of authority at work, opportunities for growth and recognition, no feeling of close supervision, active participation in labour force, how one is doing on the job, and being offered constructive feedback by superiors.

Locke (1976) defines job satisfaction as a “pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job or job experiences” (p. 1300). More specifically, the concept of job satisfaction is the discrepancy between what an individual expects, needs or values about their job compared with how much of this the job actually delivers.

Thedossious describes 6 measures of psychological health thus; strain, ability to enjoy everyday activities, able to face up to problems, confidence in self and at work, feeling of being in control or being a worthless person, and happiness with one’s self and work.

Job satisfaction has been proven to be important in determining psychological health of an individual, hence the degree to which this occurs and the relationship whether positive or negative has motivated many research papers carried out on the topic.

Dissatisfaction with jobs leads to possible turnover and premature job loss threatens both the economic self sufficiency and the psychological well-being of the individual [Kirsch, 2000; McReynolds, 2001; Szymanski and Hershenon, 1998]

Spill over hypothesis has been described by Near, Hunt et al, and Tate et al (1989), as job satisfaction spilling over to life satisfaction and hence a resulting good psychological health. There is a positive association between job satisfaction and psychological health.

Other models/hypothesis are compensation, segmentation and disaggregation.

Ofili 1998, in a study carried out amongst nurses in the teaching hospital in Benin, Nigeria showed a strong association between job satisfaction and psychological disorder. Crude odd ratio of 8.52, p<0.001. This significance remained after controlling for confounders such as adolescent children, stress outside work, and length of service. Similar cross sectional studies done in Doctors in the same hospital showed the same results, but less significant than for nurses.

Petrovski and Gleeson 1997 did a panel study among intellectually impaired individuals working in a competitive environment. Psychological health was rated based on 4 factors; self esteem, loneliness, stigmatisation, and aspirations. Job satisfaction was found to be generally higher amongst this group of people than the normal population. Showed negative significant correlation between job satisfaction and self esteem, loneliness, and stigmatisation, but none with aspirations. Endogeneity was also considered.

Notembomer ,A. Et al did a study on job satisfaction and short term sickness absence due to behavioural/psychological factors among Dutch workers. Here the job satisfaction was split into global job satisfaction, and specific job satisfaction such as colleague, supervisor... There was no relation between global job satisfaction and duration of short term illness, but there was significant positive correlation between colleague satisfaction and longer duration of short term absences. Correlation coefficient Beta 0.125 p=0.03.

Hence its necessary to find out specific aspects of job satisfaction and how psychological health is affected by them, as they could be varied.

In an evidence review done by Bartley at al 2005, an overall decrease in job satisfaction was noted generally and it was more in the older workforce. It was also more in the intermediate jobs and least in the semi-routine and routine jobs.

This trend should encourage more in-depth studies into the relationship between work, job satisfaction and psychological health.

Majority of studies and research shows that job satisfaction has a strong relationship to psychological health, as the more satisfied a worker is, the better their psychological health, and vice versa. Endogeneity should be factored in, as a worker with psychological problems might have difficulty being satisfied with a job that might otherwise being satisfactory.

Further research should thus focus on specific aspects of the job and satisfaction with that, and should involve larger numbers of individuals that cut across several occupations, instead of the industry specific, or workplace specific studies that seem to have been done.