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Organization of Work: Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ)

Workers putting puzzle pieces together

Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ)

http://www.jcqcenter.org

ID = 086

Content Area(s)

  • Job content
  • Job control
  • Job demands (or expectations)
  • Social supports / relations
  • Job (in)security

Instrument Type

Questionnaire

Occupation and Sector Specificity

Occupation(s): Generic

Sector(s): Generic

Name and Size of Work Organization and/or Workplace Psychosocial Measures

Co-worker social support (6 items)

Decision authority (3 items)

Job insecurity (6 items)

Macro-level decision authority (8 items)

Physical job demands (5 items)

Psychological job demands (5 items)

Skill discretion (6 items)

Skill underutilization (1 item)

Supervisor social support (5 items)

Other Content Areas Included in the Instrument

Mental health measures (2 items)

Physical health measures (2 items)

Developmental Status of the Instrument

Instrument used widely; well-defined properties.

Languages

Original: English

Other: Translation and back-translation has been performed for the following languages: Belgium / Flemish, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, German, Greek, French (Canada), Iceland, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Spain: Valença (Castilian), Barcelona (Catalunya), and Lleida), Swedish, Taiwanese, and Thai.

Reliability and Validity Information (or Relevant Citation)

Karasek R and Theorell T (1990) Healthy work: stress, productivity, and the reconstruction of working life, New York: Basic Books.

Selected Reference

Karasek R, Brisson C, Kawakami N, Houtman I, Bongers P and Amick, B. (1998) The job content questionnaire (JCQ): an instrument for internationally comparative assessments of psychosocial job characteristics. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 3(4): 322-355.

Accessibility of the Instrument

Registration Required

User Fees

The JCQ is provided with research documentation to most users free of charge, but commercial and very large research projects pay a usage fee to support comparative reliability analysis and instrument development on a nonprofit basis through the JCQ Center, University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Where to Obtain a Copy of the Instrument

Users should request the instrument from the JCQ Center, located at the Øresund Synergy ApS in Denmark, by telephone +45 40461000 or by sending an e-mail to jcqcenter@oresundsynergy.com.