Work 40 (2011) 393–399 393

DOI 10.3233/WOR-2011-1251
IOS Press

Relationship between job stress, occupational

position and job satisfaction using a brief job
stress questionnaire (BJSQ)
Tomoyuki Kawada∗ and Toshiaki Otsuka
Department of Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan

Received 21 October 2009

Accepted 4 April 2010

Abstract. Objective: Subjects with higher occupational position are speculated to have higher ability to handle with stress, and
they were less affected by job stress. This study focused on the relationship between job satisfaction and three sub-scales of a
brief job stress questionnaire (BJSQ) related to workload.
Participants and Methods: This self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 371 employees of a company, and all the
workers sent back their responses. Among the 57 items graded on a 4-point Likert-type scale to measure job stressors, psycho-
physical complaints, and support for workers, the authors studied the influence of quantitative and qualitative job overload (six
items), job control (three items), and support port (six items). The job satisfaction score estimated on a 4-point Likert-type scale
was also used in relation to job stress determined using a 15-item scale from the BJSQ based on demand-control-support model.
Occupational positions were classified into directors, managers, and general workers, and the content of job was classified into
clerical workers, skilled technicians, and unskilled manual workers.
Results: All the scales on job stress presented acceptable alpha coefficients reflecting high internal consistency (job demand:
0.855, job control: 0.644, and support: 0.878, respectively). Principal axis factor analysis was conducted, and three factors were
extracted; support, job demand and job control. There was a significant difference in the mean score among four groups divided
by the job satisfaction level as evaluated by Dunnett’s multiple comparison, and members who were dissatisfied with their job
showed a high job demand, limited job control, and poor support. The mean score of support for managers were significantly
higher (lower support) than that for general workers. The logistic regression analysis revealed that job control and support
contributed significantly to job satisfaction. In addition, unskilled manual workers showed significantly higher job dissatisfaction
compared with clerical workers.
Conclusions: Worsening of job satisfaction was related to poor job control and lack of support. Strategies to alleviate job stress
are therefore urgently needed.

Keywords: Job stress, job satisfaction, demand-control-support model, questionnaire, occupational position

1. Introduction take stock of the circumstances, a valid and reliable

The prevalence of job-related stress among Japanese
industrial workers appears to be increasing, which is
partly related to the increasing number of suicides. To
∗ Address for correspondence: Tomoyuki Kawada, Department of
Hygiene and Public Health, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi,
Bukyo-Ku, Tokyo 113-8602, Japan. E-mail: kawada@nms.ac.jp.
method to check the stress levels in the job is required.
Many small surveys on workload and stress have been
conducted in Japan and we have also reported a study
for validation of a self-administered questionnaire to
determine the prevalence of stress in the workplace [13–
15].
Stress is evaluated by measuring psychological and
physiological distress caused by stressors, and a self-

1051-9815/11/$27.50  2011 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
394 T. Kawada and T. Otsuka / Job stress and job satisfaction
rating questionnaire is a simple method for measuring
the stress level. In general, the cause-effect relation-
ship between stressors and stress-related psychosomat-
ic problems or stress coping behavior is affected by
individual factors such as the age, sex and individual
personality [20], however, the demand-control model
for job stress, presented by Karasek et al. [11] has been
widely used and accepted as a useful tool to improve
the working environment [1,21]. In contrast, according
to a prospective study, only psychological job demand
positively contributes to the incidence of ischemic heart
disease [26], and another review, job strain is not a ma-
jor factor influencing the cardiovascular disease risk in
men [2].
There is a report representing that morbidity is sig-
nificantly related to occupational position [3]. Subjec-
tively evaluated health status was also related to occu-
pational position in male workers [25]. In Japan, there
is a report that occupational position in a company is
positively correlated with good psychological health by
questionnaire survey [6]. Furthermore, workers with
high occupational position have significantly greater
job control [18] and good mental health status [8].
In general, higher occupational position is occupied
by workers who have abilities to conduct job precisely
and rapidly, but also by works who can manage job and
workplace members with strong power of resistance
against stress. The purpose of this study is to check the
association between occupational position and stress-
related factors, and also explored the factors relating to
job satisfaction.
The Brief job stress questionnaire (BJSQ) has been
widely used and is established as a method for assessing
job stress in Japan [5,27,30], although information on
the validity and reliability of the BJSQ was limited in
the original research report of the study conducted on
10,025 male and 2,163 female workers from several
occupational fields [24]. In this study, we examined the
relationship between job stress, occupational position
and job satisfaction, with a minimum reliability study
on this questionnaire.
2. Method
The BJSQ was distributed to 371 male employees
of a company. Questionnaire survey was conducted in
combination with an annual health examination regu-
lated by law In Japan, and all the workers returned their
responses. The subjects ranged in age from the 20s to
the 50s, and the mean age and standard deviation was
36.3 and 9.9 years, respectively. There were no subjects
engaged in rotating-shift work. Informed consent was
obtained from each of the study participants, and the
study protocol was approved by the ethics committee
of the company.
The questionnaire contains 57 items with 4-point
Likert-type responses (from “agree” = 4, to “disagree”
= 1) to measure job stressors, psychosomatic com-
plaints, and support for workers. Among the sever-
al items on job stressors, the authors used quantitative
and qualitative job overload (six items), and job control
(three items) for this analysis. Supervisor support and
coworker support were measured by the scores on three
items each. Although the authors conducted a full-scale
(57 items) survey, only the scores for 15 items from
the BJSQ were used to evaluate job stress using the
three-dimensional demand, control and support mod-
el [10,27]. The job satisfaction (JS) score was also used
in relation to job stress. The score is the sum of the
scores for the individual items. Reverse scoring of Job
demand items was adopted to make concordance with
scales on job control and support. Higher scores indi-
cate higher stress (see Appendix). As the BJSQ scores
were summarized and returned to all the participants
in a sealed envelope, there were scarcely any missing
data.
Occupational position was classified into three
groups as follows: (I) director; (II) manager; and (III)
general worker. The content of job was also classified
into clerical workers, skilled technicians, and unskilled
manual workers.
Dunnett’s post hoc multiple comparisons on job
stress scores were applied, making workers with job
satisfaction and general workers as a control group, re-
spectively. Principal axis factoring analysis with Vari-
max rotation was also conducted with an initial eigen-
value of over 1 as the cutoff point. The software pro-
gram, SPSS 16.0J for Windows, was used for the anal-
yses.
3. Results
There were differences in the mean of scores for job
demand, job control, and support among the four cate-
gories of job satisfaction as determined by analysis of
variance (p < 0.05). The mean scores for job demand,
job control, and support in the ‘dissatisfied’ group were
significantly higher than those in the ‘satisfied’ group.
In addition, the mean score for support for the ‘fairly
 T. Kawada and T. Otsuka / Job stress and job satisfaction 395

Table 1
Mean and a standard deviation on job demand, job control, and support
stratified by four levels of job satisfaction
Job satisfaction n Job demand Job control Support
Satisfied 25 17.1 ± 4.4 6.7 ± 2.4 13.9 ± 4.0
Fairly satisfied 187 17.1 ± 3.3 6.7 ± 1.5 14.2 ± 3.4
Fairly dissatisfied 110 18.1 ± 3.8 7.4 ± 1.8 15.9 ± 3.4∗
Dissatisfied 49 19.8 ± 3.9∗ 8.8 ± 1.8∗ 17.9 ± 3.8∗
Significant mean differences were all recognized by the analysis of variance
(p < 0.05). Statistically significant increase against the underlined value by
Dunnett’s multiple comparison was marked. ∗ p < 0.05.

Table 2
Varimax rotated principal factor loadings of the questionnaire
of occupational position as determined by analysis of
variance (Table 3).
Items Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Communality
When multiple logistic regression analysis was ap-
A-Q1 −0.040 0.789 # −0.050 0.626
A-Q2 −0.050 0.702 # −0.123 0.511 plied, job control and support were significantly as-
A-Q3 0.000 0.761 # −0.021 0.580 sociated with job dissatisfaction (Table 4). The odds
A-Q4 −0.032 0.713 # −0.128 0.526 ratio and 95% confidence intervals indicated within
A-Q5 0.068 0.647 # 0.032 0.425
parentheses (CI) for every increase in the score by 1
A-Q6 −0.126 0.620 # −0.135 0.418
A-Q8 0.061 −0.376 0.564 # 0.463 were 1.41 (1.21–1.64) for job control, 1.21 (1.12–1.30)
A-Q9 0.021 −0.123 0.788 # 0.637 for support, and 2.32 (1.02–5.26) for unskilled manual
A-Q10 0.239 0.027 0.445 # 0.256 workers against clerical workers, respectively. In con-
C-Q1 0.622 # −0.038 0.281 0.467
C-Q2 0.675 # 0.073 0.266 0.531
trast, odds ratios and 95%CI for managers and gener-
C-Q4 0.761 # −0.011 0.012 0.580 al workers against directors were 1.44 (0.52–4.04) and
C-Q5 0.781 # −0.047 −0.006 0.613 0.62 (0.22–1.76), respectively.
C-Q7 0.776 # −0.079 0.028 0.609
C-Q8 0.787 # −0.079 0.049 0.628
Eigenvalue 3.340 3.185 1.345
% of Var 22.3 21.2 9.0 4. Discussion
#: factor loadings over 0.4 are marked.
By principal factor analysis, three factors related to
dissatisfied’ group was significantly higher than that in job stress were selected. Over half of the total vari-
the ‘satisfied’ group (Table 1). ance could be explained by these three factors (52.5%).
Principal axis factoring analysis was conducted on These results show that the three dimensions of job
21 items. Factor loadings over 0.40 were tentatively stress, namely, job demand, job control and support
selected. Three factors were extracted, and factor 1 as assessed by the BJSQ were applicable to this target
consisted of six items related to support, accounting for population in the workplace. Internal consistency, as
22.3% of the total variation. Factor 2 consisted of six assessed by Cronbach’s coefficient alpha, was accept-
items related to job demand, accounting for 21.2% of able [4]. Although there is limited information on the
the total variation. Factor 3 consisted of three items reliability of the BJSQ, the Cronbach’s alpha value for
related to job control, accounting for 9.0% of the total job control was reported to be 0.65 [30] and that for
variation. These three factors explained 52.5% of the worksite support was reported to range from 0.81 to
total variation (Table 2). The Cronbach’s coefficient 0.84 [19], and our results were consistent with these
alpha values for factors 1 to 3 were 0.878, 0.855 and values.
0.644, respectively. Mustard et al. [25] reported that odds ratio of poor
There were significant differences in the mean of to- self-rated health for male workers in lowest occupation-
tal score and support among the three categories of oc- al positions against highest occupational position over
cupational position as determined by analysis of vari- the 4-year observation was 1.80 (95% CI: 1.24–2.63).
ance (p < 0.05). The mean score for support of man- This fact is explained partly that high occupational po-
agers were significantly higher than that of general sition was positively associated with good health status
workers by Dunnett’s multiple comparison. In con- in male workers. In other words, high occupational
trast, there were no differences in the mean score for position appeared to be protective of the risk of health
job overload and job control among three categories status decline.
396 T. Kawada and T. Otsuka / Job stress and job satisfaction

Table 3
Mean and a standard deviation on job demand, job control, support, and total score of
job stress stratified by three groups of occupational position
Occupational position
Directors N = 43 Managers N = 59 General workers N = 239
Job demand 18.5 ± 3.7 18.3 ± 4.1 17.5 ± 3.5
Job control 7.1 ± 1.9 7.0 ± 1.6 7.1 ± 1.9
Support 15.8 ± 3.8 16.0 ± 3.3∗ 14.8 ± 3.7
Total score 41.6 ± 7.2 41.5 ± 6.0 39.5 ± 6.1
Significant mean differences were recognized in support and total score by the analy-
sis of variance (p < 0.05). Statistically significant increase of support score of man-
agers against support score of general workers was recognized by Dunnett’s multiple
comparison (∗ p < 0.05).

Table 4
Logistic regression analysis to predict job dissatisfaction
Variables B SE OR 95% CI Sig.
Age (20s as a control)
30s 0.11 0.40 1.11 0.51–2.46 ns
40s −0.13 0.42 0.88 0.39–1.97 ns
50s −0.90 0.50 0.41 0.15–1.09 ns
Job demand 0.06 0.04 1.06 0.99–1.14 ns
Job control 0.34 0.08 1.41 1.21–1.64 p < 0.001
Support 0.19 0.04 1.21 1.12–1.30 p < 0.001
Type of job (Clerical workers as a control)
Skilled technicians 0.49 0.37 1.64 0.80–3.36 ns
Unskilled manual workers 0.84 0.42 2.32 1.02–5.26 p < 0.05
Occupational position (Directiors as a control)
Managers 0.37 0.53 1.44 0.52–4.04 ns
General workers −0.48 0.53 0.62 0.22–1.76 ns
B: non standardized regression coefficient, SE: standard error, OR: odds ratio, CI: confidence interval,
Sig.: Significance, ns: not significant.
Significant association between job satisfaction and job control, support, or type of job was recogniozed.

In this study, the authors analyzed the association
between occupational position and job stress. As self-
rated health was empirically affected by job stress, tri-
angle relationship among occupational position, job
stress and perceived health would be existed with mod-
ified by other related factors. Related to our results,
Kawakami et al. used the Job Content Questionnaire
(JCQ) to evaluate stress level [12,17] by defining man-
agers and professionals as high-class occupations. In
addition, high job strain was defined using demand-
control model that JCQ score was above the median
on psychological demands and was below the median
on decision latitude (job control). They reported that
high-class occupational workers had greater job con-
trol, although there was no difference of job demands
and worksite social support among occupations [18]. In
addition, a greater prevalence of high job strain was ob-
served in low-class occupational workers compared to
high-class occupational workers in both men and wom-
en. In our study, there was no significant difference in
this study in the prevalence of high job strain among
three occupational positions, ranging from 37.2% in
directors and 36.7% in managers to 35.8% in general
workers.
In this study, odds ratio of unskilled manual workers
against clerical workers for job dissatisfaction showed
significantly high. The authors previously reported
that sales workers showed high prevalence of physical
symptoms compared with clerical, technical, or pro-
duction process workers [16]. There are varieties in the
content of job, and many factors should be adjusted to
evaluate health effects by the type of job.
Roelen et al. reported as information that job sat-
isfaction was negatively associated with mental work-
load (Kendall’s Tau = −0.16), and positively associ-
ated with job organization (Kendall’s Tau = 0.36) and
decision rights (Kendall’s Tau = 0.35) using 518 par-
ticipants [28]. Although job demand or workload was
not divided into mental and physical one in our study,
Kendall’s Tau between job satisfaction and job demand,
control or support were −0.21, 0.30, or 0.30, respec-
tively (p < 0.01). It seems acceptable that some of
the components of stress are related to job satisfaction,
although the level of significance was weak.
 T. Kawada and T. Otsuka / Job stress and job satisfaction
Sundin et al. reported using a large epidemiological
sample (n = 16,144) that perceived job control had
the largest impact on the degree of social support [31].
They conducted research to clarify factor to determine
the level of social support, because social support was
a strong predictor of health level. Lopes et al. reported
that high strain was significantly related to psycholog-
ical distress measured by general health questionnaire
12-item version (GHQ12) only in women, and occupa-
tional status did not significantly related to GHQ12. In
contrast, low support at work against high support was
significantly associated with high GHQ12 score [23].
In our study, both job control and support significantly
related to job satisfaction by multivariate analysis.
There are some limitations of this study. First, a
test-retest reliability study and validation study for this
questionnaire are still lacking. Although there is no
scale of social desirability in the BJSQ, participants
in this study were explained that this information is
used only for health care and not used for personal af-
fairs. In regard to validation of the BJSQ, the authors
did not conduct objective or physiological measure-
ments on stress. In this regard, the BJSQ was origi-
nally derived from questions in the JCQ scale [12] and
the NIOSH job stress instrument [7]. Second, about
half of the variance was only accounted for three di-
mensions by the principal axis factor analysis. Third,
working conditions were not precisely investigated and
cross-sectional data from a company were used for the
analysis. Although such limitations existed, dissatis-
fied workers suffered from low job control and low job
support in our study. Information on the mental health
status of the workers would be useful for health care
staff as well as the workers themselves. The Japanese
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare recommend-
ed that employers reduce heavy workload to prevent
cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases [9]. The authors
assume that this recommendation would also be useful
to prevent mental distress. Repeated use of the BJSQ
to check for workload and health problems of workers
is needed as a population strategy for subjects in the
workplace [29].
Improving job stress makes it possible to promote
employee health, as well as prevent employee ill-
health [22]. Work environment should be the main fo-
cus of any future job re-designing programs. Although
there is a limitation on the validity of evaluating job
satisfaction with a one-item question [32], the authors
conclude that job control and support had a stronger
influence on job satisfaction for workers in this cross-
sectional study conducted using the demand-control-
support model [1,11,21].
397
5. Conclusion
We have presented the relationship between the job
stress level as evaluated by three components of the
brief job stress questionnaire (BJSQ), and job satisfac-
tion.
The self-administered questionnaire was distribut-
ed to 371 male employees of a company, and three
scales, such as job overload (six items), job control
(three items), and support (six items) were used, which
was concordant with the results of the principal factor
analysis. The job satisfaction level as assessed on a
4-point Likert-type scale was also used in relation to
job stress using 15-item scales from the BJSQ based on
the demand-control-support model.
There was a significant difference in the mean BJSQ
score among four groups divided by job satisfaction,
and members who were dissatisfied with their job
showed the high job demand, limited job control, and
poor support. The mean score on support for managers
became significantly high (worse) than that for general
workers. According to the results of logistic regression
analysis, job control, job support and unskilled man-
ual work related significantly to job satisfaction and
dissatisfaction.
Worsening of job satisfaction was related to poor job
control and lack of support. From the viewpoint of the
demand-control-support model, job overload was not
significantly related to job satisfaction in this study.
Acknowledgments
We wish to express our appreciation to the study
participants.
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Appendix

Fifteen items for the evaluation of job demand (D), job control(C), support (S), and degree of job satisfaction in the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire
(BJSQ)
D-1. You have to do an enormous amount of work.
D-2. You cannot complete all your work in the allotted time.
D-3. You have to work very hard.
D-4. You have to focus your attention quite a lot.
D-5. You do a difficult job that requires a high level of knowledge and skill.
D-6. You have to constantly think about your work during working hours.
C-1. You can work at your own pace.
C-2. You can decide the order in which you do your work and the way you do it.
C-3. You can reflect your own opinions on the workplace’s work strategy.
S-1. You can often communicate with supervisor.
S-2. You can often communicate with co-worker.
S-3. You can strongly rely on supervisor if you have some trouble.
S-4. You can strongly rely on co-worker if you have some trouble.
S-5. Your supervisor kindly spends his/her time on your private problem.
S-6. Your co-worker kindly spends his/her time on your private problem.
JS-1. You have job satisfaction in your work.
Responses to the job demand items are scored on a 4-point Likert-type scale (4. agree; 3. somewhat agree; 2. soemwhat disagree; and 1.
disagree). Responses to the items on job control, support, and job satisfaction are scored on a 4-point Likert-type scale (1. agree; 2. somewhat
agree; 3. soemwhat disagree; and 4. disagree). Reverse scoring of Job demand items was adopted to make concordance with scales on job
control and support. Summation on each factor on job strain was made.