The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire--a tool for the assessment and improvement of the psychosocial work environment.

By T. Kristensen, H. Hannerz, A. Høgh, V. Borg. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health, 2005

1,423 citations recorded by the source corpus.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this article is to present the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ), a questionnaire developed in three different lengths for assessing psychosocial factors at work, stress, and the well-being of employees and some personality factors. The purpose of the COPSOQ concept is to improve and facilitate research, as well as practical interventions at workplaces. METHODS The development of the questionnaire was based on a survey of a representative sample of 1858 Danish employees aged 20-59 years. The response rate was 62%; 49% were women. Altogether 145 questions from some international and Danish questionnaires and 20 self-developed questions were tested with factor analyses, analyses of internal reliability, and analyses of response patterns. RESULTS The analyses resulted in a long research version of the questionnaire with 141 questions and 30 dimensions, a medium-length version for work environment professionals with 95 questions and 26 dimensions, and a short version for workplaces with 44 questions and 8 dimensions. Most of the scales have good reliability, and there seems to be very little overlap between the scales. A novel feature of the COPSOQ is the development of five different scales on demands at work. CONCLUSIONS The COPSOQ concept is a valid and reliable tool for workplace surveys, analytic research, interventions, and international comparisons. The questionnaire seems to be comprehensive and to include most of the relevant dimensions according to several important theories on psychosocial factors at work. The three versions facilitate communication between researchers, work environment professionals, and workplaces.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/605cc9733073a50efc1055098299647c4b8d8bb2

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In General Health Professions

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The second version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (2010, methodology): “The COPSOQ I included a majority of the main dimensions of the seven theories in occupational health psychology but also lacked some important factors related to work: reward, justice, trust and discrimination [1].”
High-performance work practices, employee well-being, and supportive leadership: spillover mechanisms and boundary conditions between HRM and leadership behavior (2020, methodology): “The scale has been developed following the COPSOQ questionnaire (Kristensen et al., 2005) and was consistently related to employees’ psychological well-being in the previous wave of the EWCS (Sch€ utte et al.”
Proactivity, job characteristics, and engagement: a longitudinal study (2010, methodology): “Schreurs and Taris, 1998; de Jonge and Kompier, 1997), the job-control dimension of Karasek (1985) (or the “job resource” dimension of the JD-R model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007)) was operationalized as “influence at work” (Kristensen et al., 2005).”
A systematic review including meta-analysis of work environment and burnout symptoms (2017, methodology): “For job demand and control the most commonly applied instruments were the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) [22] and Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire [23].”
The work ability index and single-item question: associations with sick leave, symptoms, and health--a prospective study of women on long-term sick leave. (2010, methodology): “Self-rated general health (5 items), self-rated mental health (5 items), behavioral stress (5 items), and vitality (4 items) were measured with the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (29).”
Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement (2010, background): “Firstly, the internal consistency of decision authority was rather low possibly due to a small number of items used (Kristensen et al., 2005).”
Burnout among university faculty: the central role of work–family conflict (2018, methodology): “The COPSOQ II is a well-established standardised instrument for assessing psychosocial factors at work as well as the health and well-being of employees (Kristensen et al., 2005), including burnout.”