Mental Health, Work Values and Job Characteristics

• In Event: 161 - Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Job Satisfaction and Well-being

Abstract

Abstract
This paper includes measures of mental health to test the relationship between work values and job characteristics over time. Job characteristics may reinforce work values, thus increasing well-being, or work values may reflect unfulfilled basic needs and low well-being. In order to test these two hypotheses, two measures of well-being, self-esteem and locus of control, are included in a structural equation model of work values in three time points in the panel data set, the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972. Results suggest that self-esteem and locus of control have independent impact on work values when respondents are 22 years of age. Well-being continues to have an independent impact both on work values and job characteristics when respondents are 26, and 32 years of age. When basic needs are valued but not attained over time, respondents with an external locus of control are more likely to value pay in comparison to groups that have their basic needs met. These groups tend to be overrepresented by Black Americans, those with a high school education and women. Groups that have their basic needs met tend to increase their emphasis on job autonomy and to be White, college educated, male and from a higher SES background. This finding suggests that well-being is an important factor in predicting work values. The same groups that might have fewer psychological resources growing up, are less likely to get jobs that foster a sense of well-being in the long term.

Author

• Jennifer M. Ashlock, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill