Browsing by Author "Herlin, Rose-Marie"

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    Utveckling av arbetsmiljö och upplevd hälsa : en longitudinell undersökning av anställda i kraftindustrin
    (Arbetslivsinstitutet, 2003) Herlin, Rose-Marie
    Effects of the work environment on subjective health : a nine-year longitudinal investigation of workers in the electric power industry The effects of the work environment on the subjective health of 440 workers in the electric power industry over a nine years period were investigated in this thesis. The problem is described in a theoretical model including probable causal relations between the work environment and subjective health. An additional aim of the investigation was to compare data of different levels of subjectivity. A survey of the work environment and a description of the health development were followed by special studies, including the effects from the work environment on development of musculoskeletal and psychological complaints respectively. In addition, the relations between more and less subjective data concerning noise and its effects were analysed. The survey of the working conditions was made by cluster analysis of exposure variables. Based on results from the analyses, workers were clustered with respect to their perception of ergonomic, physical and psychological and social work factors respectively over four measurement occasions. The number of periods a person belonged to a certain cluster was used as indicators of exposure dose in the concluding analyses. There was an increase of some psychological and of musculoskeletal complaints in neck, shoulders, back, legs and joints over the nine years period. The complaints were described with confirmative factor analysis to get an acceptable representation of the data structure, which was stable across the measurement occasions. The influence of the work environment on the development of complaints was studied by hierarchic multiple regression analysis models. Latent growth modeling was an alternative analysis method but could only be applied on reduced models. The sample was too small to make it possible to include all variables in the regression models in these analyses. The musculoskeletal diseases were mainly related to the ergonomic factors while the psychological diseases was related to time pressure, lack of control and lack of social support as well as to type A-behaviour. One fifth of the workers developed a hearing impairment in the study period. Working category could explain more of the changes in hearing threshold shifts than estimated equivalent sound level, membership of a certain exposure cluster or self-reported noise exposure. Key words: Work environment, electric power industry, health, subjectivity, musculoskeletal complaints, psychological complaints, noise, longitudinal, cluster analysis, regression analysis, structural equation modeling.