The Structure of Demand, Control, and Stability-Support Underlying the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0-An...

Dominant theories in the field of occupational stress have so far mainly focused only on job task level psychosocial factors. Our novelty was to move the field forward by testing a new multilevel conceptualization of workplace health-related psychosocial factors, captured in the new JCQ 2.0 tool. The JCQ 2.0 tool assesses the theoretical constructs Demand (D), Control (C) and Stability-Support (S-S) at the task and the organizational level in accordance with the Associationalist Demand/Control (ADC) Model. We aimed for a first step to assess the generalizability of the framework by collecting data in four different countries (Korea, China, Australia, and Germany). Using structural equation modeling, the task level three-factor DCS structure was largely confirmed across all four countries (with one exception: skill discretion was an indicator of both control and demand). The organizational level, three-factor DCS-S structure was tested and confirmed in the German data only (only data with sufficient scales). Similarly, the multilevel DCS-S model could only be tested with the German data only and was largely confirmed with the three organizational level factors (D, C, and S-S) as antecedents to their task level analogues (with one exception: supervisor support was an indicator of organizational rather than task level support). The findings provide a first step to advancing existing knowledge by providing preliminary support for a multilevel DCS model. Further multilevel longitudinal research is required to verify the main findings and explain some of the nuances uncovered here.