Strain as a moderator of the relationship between work characteristics and work attitudes

Research on the psychological effects of work characteristics has investigated their relationships with both work attitudes and psychological strain, with the latter 2 variables being treated as alternative or joint dependent variables. The focus of this article is to propose that strain moderates the relationship between perceptions of work characteristics and work attitudes. The proposition is tested on a maximum sample of 9,327 health care employees by using moderated multiple regression followed by subgroup comparisons. The results strongly support the moderating effect, showing that as strain increases, the strength of the relationship between perceptions of work characteristics and work attitudes decreases.