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[Description of psychosocial risk factors in four companies]
F G Benavides1, D Gimeno, J Benach
1Unitat de Recerca en Salut Laboral, Departament de Ciències Experimentals i de la Salut, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. fernando.benavides@cexs.upf.es
Objective:
To describe the distribution of work-related psychosocial risk factor scores in four companies according to the personal and occupational characteristics of the workers.
Methods:
Cross-sectional study of a sample of 890 workers in four companies who participated in this study voluntarily. The overall response rate was 34.5%. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to measure the presence of demand, control and social support according to the workers' perceptions. Statistical analyses were performed using median and dispersion measures of psychosocial risk factors for each company separately, as well as description of their distribution according to personal and occupational variables.
Results:
The median score for social support was almost always equal to 5 for all four companies. However, there was greater variability in psychological demand (between 13 and 16), and for control (between 20 and 26). Comparison of the scores for social and occupational variables revealed similar values for social support but not for control and demand, which showed greater variation according to sex (men), age group (less than 40 years) and occupation (clerks).
Conclusions:
Although the low response rate could limit the validity of our results, this is the first study to value the distribution of work-related psychosocial risk factor scores in four companies in Spain. Variability among companies for different groups of workers was found. This study could be useful for future studies exploring the feasibility of defining reference values for use in preventive measures.