An International Comparative Reliability and Concurrent Validity Assessment of the Multi-Level Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0

Background: This paper empirically tests the new multi-level Associationalist Demand Control (ADC) theory by applying the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) 2.0 that assesses both a wide range of task characteristics as well as work organizational and external-to-work psychosocial characteristics. Methods: The paper is based on four JCQ 2.0 pilot studies among 16,125 workers in Korea, China, Australia, and Germany. All pilots used the original JCQ task-level scales and then added newly developed proposed items and scales, evolving more comprehensive higher-level scales from pilot to pilot from 2005 to 2011. A brief review of the analytic process is presented, followed by an assessment of the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the final 25 multi-level JCQ 2.0 scales at the task, the organizational, and the external levels. Results: Adequate psychometric properties were established for the JCQ 2.0 pilot scales. The extended set of task-level scales was found to be robust across all samples; the new organizational scales mainly showed adequate internal consistency with α > 0.7 in Australia and Germany (tested only there) and were associated with relevant work- and health-related outcome measures as expected. Similarly, the external-to-work scales (tested only in Germany) had adequate Cronbach’s Alpha values and showed expected associations to relevant outcome scales. Conclusions: Although not all scales were available in all countries, overall, the results support the “functional similarity” of the major scale areas across the four pilot countries and support the underlying extensions of the Demand–Control theoretical constructs to the multi-level psychosocial work assessment for the promotion of workers’ health and wellbeing as suggested by the new ADC model.