TITLE:
Using Single-Item Measures to Examine the Relationships between Work, Personality, and Well-Being in the Workplace
AUTHORS:
Gary M. Williams, Andrew P. Smith
KEYWORDS:
Well-Being, Well-Being Process Questionnaire, Work Characteristics, Personality, Job Satisfaction, Affect, Anxiety and Depression
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.7 No.6,
June
1,
2016
ABSTRACT: Measuring the well-being of employees
through questionnaire measures can give a useful indication of the positive or
negative mental health of a workforce along with their satisfaction with their
circumstances. Furthermore, measuring the antecedents of these outcomes
provides a basis for reducing negative outcomes and promoting positive mental
health and satisfaction within an organization. This endeavour can quickly
become impractical, however, as taking into account the range of possible
environmental or personal factors, can lead to a lengthy and burdensome
measurement tool. The current paper examines the use of single-items for this
purpose, demonstrating that single-item measures of work-related and
personality factors exhibit relationships with each other and with outcomes
that the literature on well-being predicts. Using multiple-regression analysis,
the results show that work related factors such as control and reward provide
significant predictors of well-being outcomes including job satisfaction, while
personality factors such as self-esteem and self-efficacy are significant
predictors of all outcome measures. Furthermore, variations in the
relationships with specific outcomes and interaction effects are found. The
results suggest that using single-item measures may provide a valid approach to
investigating well-being in the workplace in circumstances that may require
very brief scales.