Job strain and self-reported health among working women and men: an analysis of the 1994/5 Canadian National Population Health Survey

This paper explores the associations, for working women and men, of high strain jobs with self-rated health in the 1994/95 Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS). NPHS data were obtained on men (n = 4230) and women (n = 4043), aged 18-64 who answered an abbreviated version of the job content questionnaire (JCQ). Using the upper and lower tertiles of psychological demands and decision latitude as cut points we classified workers into high strain and other jobs. Self-rated health was the outcome. We used polytomous logistic regression analyses and controlled for potential personal and home confounders; two risk parameters were estimated: for the odds of reporting poor/fair and good health both vs. very good/excellent health. High strain work was reported by 11% of women and 9% of men. After adjusting for potential confounders, high job strain was consistently associated with worse self-rated health in both models for each gender