Systematic comparative content analysis of 17 psychosocial work environment questionnaires using a new taxonomy

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Psychology
• Sociology

Background:

• Numerous questionnaires exist to assess psychosocial factors in the workplace.
• Content validity of these instruments is often questionable due to a lack of standardized classification for work environment characteristics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive taxonomy of work environment characteristics relevant to psychosocial risks.
• To apply this taxonomy to analyze existing questionnaires measuring workplace psychosocial factors.

Main Methods:

• A taxonomy was created by synthesizing factors from major theoretical models in the field.
• Frequently cited questionnaire items from scientific literature were systematically classified using the developed taxonomy.

Main Results:

• The resulting taxonomy is hierarchical, with four levels and 53 distinct categories.
• Analysis of 17 questionnaires revealed 927 items distributed across five key domains: physical, social, work activity, activity management, and organizational context.

Conclusions:

• Significant content disparities exist among the evaluated questionnaires.
• The proposed taxonomy provides a valuable tool for selecting appropriate scales based on their content coverage of psychosocial risk factors.