Department of Communication Sciences, University of Siena, via Roma 56, Siena, 53100, Italy.
Occup Med (Lond). 2012 Apr;62(3):203-9. doi: 10.1093/occmed/kqs021. Epub 2012 Mar 6.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) indicator tool is one of the most commonly used tools for assessing the risk of work-related stress. Few studies, however, have investigated whether and how its scales are related to psychological distress or other work-related health outcomes.
To investigate the relationship between the HSE indicator tool, psychological distress, as measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12, and work ability, assessed by the Work Ability Index (WAI).
All the employees of a mid-sized bank in Italy were asked to fill in an anonymous cross-sectional questionnaire. The questionnaire was structured in four sections: the first one comprised socio-demographic questions and the other three corresponded, respectively, to the Italian translations of the GHQ-12, the HSE and the WAI questionnaires.
Four hundred and thirteen employees completed the questionnaire. The response rate was 99%. Controlling for age and gender, the indicator subscales were negatively associated with the adopted measures of psychological distress and work ability. The GHQ score was also highly correlated with the WAI score and able to explain ≈ 47% of its variance. The only subscale that was still significantly associated with the WAI after removing the effect of psychological distress was 'control'.
The study presents new evidence for the validity of the HSE indicator tool to estimate the risk of work-related stress and suggests that most but not all the effects of psychosocial conditions on work ability might be mediated by the level of psychological distress induced by these conditions.
健康与安全执行局（HSE）指标工具是评估与工作相关的压力风险最常用的工具之一。然而，很少有研究调查其量表与心理困扰或其他与工作相关的健康结果之间是否以及如何相关。
调查 HSE 指标工具与心理困扰（用一般健康问卷（GHQ）-12 测量）以及工作能力（用工作能力指数（WAI）评估）之间的关系。
意大利一家中型银行的所有员工都被要求填写一份匿名的横断面问卷。问卷分为四个部分：第一部分包括社会人口统计学问题，另外三个部分分别对应 GHQ-12、HSE 和 WAI 问卷的意大利语翻译。
413 名员工完成了问卷。回复率为 99%。控制年龄和性别后，指标子量表与所采用的心理困扰和工作能力测量值呈负相关。GHQ 评分与 WAI 评分高度相关，能够解释其约 47%的变异。在去除心理困扰的影响后，唯一与 WAI 仍显著相关的子量表是“控制”。
该研究为 HSE 指标工具评估与工作相关的压力风险的有效性提供了新的证据，并表明心理困扰可能在一定程度上中介了心理社会条件对工作能力的影响，但并非所有影响都是如此。
