The measurement of well‐being and other aspects of mental health

TLDR

The study introduces new instruments to measure job‑related and non‑job mental health. The instruments assess affective well‑being along pleasure and arousal axes, and also capture competence, aspiration, and negative job carry‑over. Baseline data from 1,686 job‑holders show the instruments are psychometrically sound and correlate with demographics and occupational factors as expected, such as higher well‑being in older workers, occupational level linked to depression‑enthusiasm but inversely to anxiety‑contentment, depression‑enthusiasm driven by skill opportunity and task variety, and anxiety‑contentment related to workload or uncertainty.

Abstract

New instruments are described for the measurement of both job‐related and non‐job mental health. These cover two axes of affective well‐being, based upon dimensions of pleasure and arousal, and also reported competence, aspiration and negative job carry‐over. Baseline data are presented from a sample of 1686 job‐holders, and earlier uses of the well‐being scales are summarized. The instruments appear to be psychometrically acceptable, and are associated with demographic and occupational features in expected ways. For example, older employees report greater job‐related well‐being; occupational level is positively correlated with job depression‐enthusiasm but negatively associated with job anxiety‐contentment; depression‐enthusiasm is more predictable from low‐to‐medium opportunity for skill use and task variety, whereas anxiety‐contentment is more a function of workload or uncertainty.