[Interindividual differences in personality and behavior and subjective health problems in shift workers]

A total of 604 experienced shift workers were administered a battery of questionnaires in order to examine the relationships between the shift workers' features and subjective health complaints taken as signs of intolerance to shift work. The individual difference measures included: hard-driving and competitiveness, speed and impatience, relaxed, efficiency, flexibility of behaviour, evening, rigidity of sleeping habits, vigorous, languidness, inveterate, flexibility of habits, neuroticism, extraversion, lie-scale, age and work experience. The subjective health complaints included: generally poor health, musculo-skeletal, respiratory and psychosomatic-digestive complaints, and digestive problems. Correlation and multiple regression analyses showed that in workers some personality features and patterns of behaviour were related to the subjective health complaints. More health complaints were placed by workers who were emotionally unstable, less relaxed, inefficient, rigid (e.g. unable to control the behavioral arousal level), hard-driving and competitive, speedy and impatient (A-types), rigid in sleeping and other life habits, languid, older and with longer shift work experience.