Job features and individual factors : testing a model of well-being.

Abstract

In recent years, psychological well-being has emerged as an area of great importance. Whilst much research has been conducted to investigate the effects of personal and environmental factors on well-being, very little research has examined the combined effects of many factors on well-being. There exists in the literature a need for the development and testing of models which consider the combined influence of many features on well-being. The primary aim of this study was to test a model of employee well-being and its determinants developed by Warr (1999).Whilst there is much theoretical support for this model, to date it does not appear to have been empirically tested. The model shows that the three dimensions of jobspecific well-being (job satisfaction; anxiety-comfort; depression-enthusiasm) are affected by socio-demographic factors, individual factors and features of the environment. Affective disposition was used as the individual factor in this study, and the 12 features of work included in Warr’s (1999) Vitamin Model were used as the environmental features. The 12 features are: opportunity for personal control, opportunity for skill use, externally generated goals, task variety, environmental clarity, contact with others, availability of money, physical security, valued social position, supportive supervision, career outlook, and equity. The sociodemographic features which were examined in this study are age, gender, marital status, education, tenure and race. A second aim of this study was to determine the linearity of the relationships between the 12 job features and well-being. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire which was distributed to the employees of a large call centre in Johannesburg. The questionnaire consisted of a demographical questionnaire, Warr, Cook, and Wall’s (1979) measure of Global Job Satisfaction to measure the first axis of well-being, Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector and Kelloway’s (2000) Job-Related Affective Wellbeing Scale to measure the second and third axes of wellbeing, Warr’s (1999) 26 Features of a Good or Bad Job to measure the twelve job features, and Watson, Clark and Tellegen’s (1988) Positive and Negative Affect Schedule to measure affective disposition. The final sample consisted of 135 respondents. iii The results of this study indicate that affective disposition and job features affect well-being. All of the job features except externally generated goals were significantly correlated with wellbeing, with the strongest correlations being found for career outlook and equity. The only significant correlation that was found for demographic features was the relationship between marital status and affective disposition. Thus the component of Warr’s (1999) model which illustrates that demographic features influence affective disposition and job features was not supported. The finding that race explains a large amount of the variance in axis 2 of well-being indicates that, contrary to what is proposed by Warr’s (1999) model, demographic features may have a direct influence on well-being. Overall, equity explained the greatest amount of variance in the first and second axes of well-being, and career outlook explained the greatest amount of variance in the third axis of well-being. It was not possible to identify any curvilinear relationships between job features and well-being.