Role perceptions, job satisfaction, and attitudes towards shiftwork of workers in different shift systems as related to
In the context of a research project on the problems of shiftwork in “continuous-working” industries we conducted a survey on the perception of the social situation and on the attitudes and subjective evaluations of health states in shiftworkers.
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Role perceptions, job satisfaction, and attitudes towards shiftwork of workers in different shift systems as related to situational and personal factors F. Nachreiner Introduction In the context of a research project on the problems of shiftwork in "continuous-working" industries we conducted a survey on the perception of the social situation and on the attitudes and subjective evaluations of health states in shiftworkers. It seemed necessary to do this survey on shiftworkers Operating in more than one particular shift system, since, as Seargean points out, it would be unreasonable to expect uniform role perceptions and attitudes under different shift systems. Under a "field" or "interaction" theoretical approach it is only to be expected that the shiftworkers' evaluation of their Situation, and their attitudes towards shiftwork will be influenced by a large nurober of personal and situational variables, which both in their simple and in their interactive effects, will lead to different attitudes, role perceptions and behaviour (cf.Mott et al. 1965). For this reason we tried to analyse the effect of different shift systems, a situational variable with strong implications for the social life of the shiftworker. The times and the duration of working hours determine the possibility of participation in social activities and inter-personal relationships. These are, as far as they are independent of work itself, concentrated in the late evening hours in our culture, the time at which the normal worker is free to da what he wants. The effects of this restriction of the "social interaction" of shiftworkers should be different according to the personality of the shiftworker involved. Thus it could be hypothesized that people who are basically more introverted should be able to cope with this problern better than extraverts with their strenger social orientation, and that emotionally unstable people should find rnore difficulty in coping with the problems raised by shiftwork.
P. Colquhoun et al., Experimental Studies of Shiftwork © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 1975
- 233 These differential effects of the shift system and the personality structure should be reflected both in behavioral data and in attitudinal reactions. However, since we did not have access to the former, in our analysis we used the shift system and the personality structure of our respondents as independent variables; and attitudes towards various aspects of shiftwork as the dependent variables. It should be mentioned that the nature of our survey was essentially exploratory; thus initially we did not aim to test specific hypotheses. Methods A questionnaire was administered to a volunteer sample of 1005 male workers in two companies. These companies each had two different shiftsystems, one system with three 8-hour shifts (morning, afternoon, night) with weekly rotation and one system with two 12-hour shifts (day and night) with a shorter form of rotation. 54 of our respondents.who were foreign workers had to be excluded because of language difficulties.
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