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Assessment of the psychosocial work environment of professional drivers

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Abstract

Aim

Along with globalization in recent periods, psychosocial risks at the workplace have been classified as considerable developing risks for human mental and physical health. These risks exist both in developed and developing countries. The current study aims to assess the psychosocial work environment of professional drivers in a multidimensional concept.

Subject and methods

The study population consisted of 645 Iranian professional drivers. Psychosocial factors were examined in five domains including job demand, job content, interpersonal relationship, work–individual interface and general and mental health through the validated Persian medium-size version of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ).

Results

Among 26 psychosocial scales, sensory demands (91.3) and cognitive demands (70.3) got the highest average scores in professional drivers. Logistic regression was applied to evaluate the association between psychosocial work environment indexes and self reported health and well being of drivers. This study showed that poor psychosocial work environment in job demand, job content, work–individual interface as well as having a car accident history was associated with unfavorable health outcomes for the participants, after adjustment for age, marital status, education level, vehicle type and smoking.

Conclusion

It is worth focusing on drivers’ working schedule and their psychosocial work environment.

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Acknowledgements

The authors of this manuscript would like to thank Doctor Alipasha Meysamie for his assistance with statistical analysis. We also want to thank Doctor Sanaz Eftekhari for editing and English correction.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Correspondence to Sahar Eftekhari.

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Aminian, O., Eftekhari, S., Ghaffari, M. et al. Assessment of the psychosocial work environment of professional drivers. J Public Health 23, 341–347 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-015-0684-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-015-0684-5

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