We’re pleased to announce that Work characteristics, socio-economic position and health: A systematic review of mediation and moderation effects in prospective studies, has been published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine and is open access.
This systematic review, by Hanno Hoven & Johannes Siegrist (Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf), produced as part of the DRIVERS project, looks at mediation and moderation effects in prospective studies.
Physical stressors and occupational hazards have traditionally been considered the major causes of work-related health risks. With the advent of economic globalisation stressful psychosocial work environments are no longer confined to low-skilled occupational groups and it is therefore important to know more about exactly how work affects the health of working people and to what extent these associations explain the social gradient of health.
Two hypotheses have been applied to tackle this challenge. The mediation hypothesis claims that the association between socio-economic position and health can partly be explained by the effects of work and employment. The moderation hypothesis claims that the effect of work characteristics on health varies according to socio-economic position. The finds moderate support in favour of both hypotheses. In addition, a series of recommendations for further research are set out:
- Studies should test an explicit hypothesis, rather than exploring what variables may produce statistically significant results; this requires a priori definition of the core variable.
- Studies should analyse separate and combined effects of the psychosocial and the physical work environment, and focus on appropriate tests of respective theoretical models.
- Studies should focus on those employment and working conditions that are becoming more prevalent under current worldwide economic and financial conditions (e.g. high job insecurity, contract work, etc..
- Results should be obtained from cohort studies that do not overemphasise the stable work and employment conditions that are more prevalent in large organisations.
- It is important to analyse non-western countries and rapidly developing societies, in view of the dynamics of economic globalisation.
- Despite obvious difficulties, intervention studies should be performed to improve scientific evidence.
