Sheng Zitong, Griffin Mark A
Future of Work Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Stress Health. 2023 Apr;39(2):384-403. doi: 10.1002/smi.3190. Epub 2022 Sep 1.
Although job insecurity and employability have drawn much research attention, the plausible relationships between them and how they jointly influence mental health remain unclear in the literature. We draw upon JD-R and COR theories to test and contrast three plausible relationships between job insecurity and employability, using a longitudinal sample of 1216 employees over 18 years. We further expand tests of these theoretical positions by considering temporal dynamics, using dynamic structural equation models (DSEMs) for stronger mediation evidence and latent growth models (LGMs) to compare the effects of job insecurity and employability trends in predicting the trend of mental health. In general, findings showed that job insecurity mediated the relationship between employability and mental health, supporting the mediation hypothesis. We also found that employability moderated the relationship between job insecurity and mental health, supporting the moderation hypothesis, although the effect was weak. Results further suggested that the effect magnitudes of job insecurity and employability predicting mental health were significantly different. Specifically, job insecurity was a stronger predictor of mental health than employability across all 18 years; the trend of job insecurity also predicted the trend of mental health more strongly than the trend of employability. Taken together, this study not only advances theory precision but also methodological soundness of research on job insecurity, employability, and mental health, supporting the value of considering temporal factors in examining mental health effects of job insecurity and employability.
尽管工作不安全感和就业能力已引起诸多研究关注，但它们之间可能存在的关系以及如何共同影响心理健康，在文献中仍不明确。我们借鉴工作需求 - 资源理论（JD - R）和 Conservation of Resources 理论（COR），以1216名员工长达18年的纵向样本，来检验和对比工作不安全感与就业能力之间三种可能的关系。我们通过考虑时间动态性进一步扩展对这些理论观点的检验，使用动态结构方程模型（DSEMs）以获得更强的中介效应证据，并使用潜在增长模型（LGMs）来比较工作不安全感和就业能力趋势在预测心理健康趋势方面的影响。总体而言，研究结果表明工作不安全感在就业能力与心理健康之间起中介作用，支持中介假设。我们还发现就业能力调节了工作不安全感与心理健康之间的关系，支持调节假设，尽管这种效应较弱。结果进一步表明，工作不安全感和就业能力在预测心理健康方面的效应大小存在显著差异。具体而言，在整个18年中，工作不安全感比就业能力更能有力地预测心理健康；工作不安全感的趋势在预测心理健康趋势方面也比就业能力的趋势更强。综上所述，本研究不仅提高了关于工作不安全感、就业能力和心理健康研究的理论精确性，还提升了方法的合理性，支持了在研究工作不安全感和就业能力对心理健康的影响时考虑时间因素的价值。
