“The paper describes a simple methodology of estimating the degree of work-related stress that is due to a mismatch between what people invest into their job... and what they receive in turn...”

Defining and measuring work-related stress is a topic of growing importance worldwide. Our paper contains crucial information on psychometric properties of a standardized questionnaire that was tested in several countries/languages. The special interest of the paper may be due to the fact that the methodology is based on a theoretical model (effort-reward imbalance; see below) that successfully predicted highly prevalent stress-related disorders in working populations by means of epidemiological studies.

While the paper describes a new methodology it is closely linked to a discovery that we made several years ago: Employed people who suffer from an imbalance between (high) effort and (low) reward at work (money, esteem, promotion prospects, job security) are at elevated risk of incident coronary heart disease (CHD). Meanwhile, this finding has been replicated and extended to additional health outcomes. Interestingly, the methodology can be applied in non-Western societies (e.g. China, Japan) as well.

The paper describes a simple methodology of estimating the degree of work-related stress that is due to a mismatch between what people invest into their job (high effort) and what they receive in turn (low reward: money, esteem, promotion prospects, job security). Respective mismatch increases the probability of developing stress-related disease in the long run, such as CHD or depression.

Basic interdisciplinary sociomedical research in the area of work stress and health has been a long-standing interest of my research team. A recent European Science Foundation Programme helped to critically advance and disseminate our methodology which also may be useful for worksite health promotion activities.