quality of work life thesis pdf

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Quality of Work Life and Organizational Performance: Workers’ Feelings of Contributing, or Not, to the Organization’s Productivity

João leitão.

1 Universidade da Beira Interior, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal; tp.ibu@anid (D.P.); [email protected] (Â.G.)

2 NECE–Research Center in Business Sciences, 6200-209 Covilhã, Portugal

3 CEG-IST–Centro de Estudos de Gestão do Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

4 ICS–Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal

Dina Pereira

Ângela gonçalves.

This is a pioneering study on the relationship between quality of work life and the employee’s perception of their contribution to organizational performance. It unveils the importance of subjective and behavioral components of quality of work life and their influence on the formation of the collaborator’s individual desire to contribute to strengthening the organization’s productivity. The results obtained indicate that for workers: feeling their supervisors’ support through listening to their concerns and by sensing they take them on board; being integrated in a good work environment; and feeling respected both as professionals and as people; positively influence their feeling of contributing to organizational performance. The results are particularly relevant given the increased weight of services in the labor market, together with intensified automation and digitalization of collaborators’ functions. The findings also contribute to the ongoing debate about the need for more work on the subjective and behavioral components of so-called smart and learning organizations, rather than focusing exclusively on remuneration as the factor stimulating organizational productivity based on the collaborator’s contribution.

1. Introduction

Employee workplace performance is related to a set of factors affecting workers’ health, habits and environment, employees’ well-being and quality of work life (QWL). QWL is associated with job satisfaction, motivation, productivity, health, job security, safety and well-being, embracing four main axes: a safe work environment; occupational health care; appropriate working time; and an appropriate salary [ 1 ]. As originally stated in [ 2 ], the concept embraces the effects of the workplace on job satisfaction, satisfaction in non-work life domains, and satisfaction with overall life, personal happiness and subjective well-being. Moreover, improving employees’ QWL will positively affect the organization’s productivity, while augmented productivity will strengthen QWL [ 3 ].

In the literature of reference, there is an ongoing and fruitful discussion about the components of QWL [ 3 ] and its different associations with metrics of non-economic performance, namely satisfaction and fulfillment of physical conditions considered basic to ensure functionality, health and safety in the workplace [ 1 ].

The most sensitive components of the QWL, still unexplored, are intrinsically related to the socio-emotional and psychological needs of employees, which require the application of more behavioral lenses, in order to unveil the components that can most influence job satisfaction and motivation, but also productivity [ 4 , 5 ].

In the context of health organizations, the relationship between QWL and productivity was already investigated, suggesting the design of adequate strategies to reinforce the productivity in hospitals [ 6 ]. However, little is known about the different ways in which the behavioral and subjective components of the QWL can influence the employee’s feeling of contribution to the productivity of the organization that they integrate.

As stated before, there is still room to advance knowledge about the effects associated with subjective components of assessment of satisfaction with QWL on organizational performance, considering a response variable of particularly critical importance in the context of reducing investment in resources and simultaneous pressure to maximize results, i.e., productivity [ 7 ]. Therefore, it is particularly opportune to investigate the non-economic (that is, subjective or behavioral) motivations that lead to collaborators’ willingness to contribute to strengthening their organization’s productivity.

Following the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s view of productivity indicators, there are plenty of productivity differences across organizations that require further studies to open up the organizational ‘black box’, concerning internal productivity determinants [ 8 ]. In fact, there is a need to advance knowledge about the individual determinants of organizational productivity. An example of this challenging task is the recent project launched by the Global Forum on Productivity (GFP), entitled: ‘The Human Side of Productivity’; considering a multidimensional approach applied to organizations, considering key people, such as workers, managers and owners [ 9 ].

Recently, in the context of public higher education, the role played by quality of life in determining satisfaction of internal stakeholders, such as students and collaborators (e.g., administrative staff, teachers and researchers), was also assessed. This opens up a research avenue concerning the lack of knowledge about the role played by the specificities of different organizational cultures in this type of institution, in influencing perception of academic quality of life by both internal and external stakeholders [ 10 ].

In this sense, there is still an open debate about the need for further understanding of the importance of organizational culture, using crossed perspectives on organizational and individual health, to be able to provide strategic lines for new organizational policies. These should be increasingly funded on a particular set of values and beliefs determining an organization’s behavioral objectives, aligned with the desired self-efficacy in terms of employees’ management and motivation [ 11 ].

Following this debate, the current study is particularly relevant, from the view that there is still limited knowledge about the necessary conditions to promote the subjective or behavioral components of satisfaction with QWL, focusing on each collaborator’s contribution to fostering the organization’s productivity. For example, a myth revisited here, through lack of thorough existing knowledge, is that productivity depends mainly on the remuneration attributed to performing certain functions. As yet unexplored subjective or behavioral factors, such as the collaborator feeling appreciated by the supervisor, the availability of jobs not subject to routines and where innovation is possible, promotion of continuous learning environments, the feeling of protection promoted by the supervisor, the feeling of having a really important and useful job, the possibility of the job allowing the development of new skills and reinforcing the conditions for personal and professional growth, are given special attention in this study. A data survey, which is pioneering in European terms, is followed by statistical and econometric treatment to shed new light on a little-explored relationship. i.e., the relationship between QWL and organizational performance, using a subjective measure of assessment of satisfaction expressed through collaborators’ feeling of contributing to organizations’ productivity.

Despite the limitations associated with the use of this dependent variable with subjective nature, its use seems to be justified, on the one hand, given the lack of studies using the behavioral lens to study the relationship between QWL and organizational performance. On the other hand, as it is not the objective of the present study to compare the relationships and the associated significance, using objective measures versus subjective measures, for the purposes of representing the dependent variable: organizational performance.

In turn, the current study aims to reveal employees’ satisfaction with the opportunities and conditions provided by their employer in six European countries, by looking after their QWL and their interests in pursuing a healthier, more satisfactory and happier lifestyle, as well as how the workplace can provide opportunities for them to improve productivity.

This study contributes to the literature on QWL and organizational performance in two ways, firstly, by identifying the determinant factors that can have a significant influence on employees’ understanding of their contribution to organizational performance, represented here by an alternative measure regarding the contribution to organizations’ productivity. Secondly, it provides new insights into complete fulfillment of the functions of human capital managers, revealing the importance of subjective and behavioral components of QWL that can help to design desirable collaborator behavior more likely to strengthen productivity in the organizational context.

The research partners involved in the survey design and administration developed an innovative tool to gather information for assessment of QWL. Afterwards, the survey was administered to 514 employees of local companies and public organizations in six European countries. Some highlights from the preliminary results obtained from the survey’s administration can be illustrated as starting points for the current study. Namely, 80% of respondents said they feel physically safe at work and more than 77% are satisfied with the fact that their workplaces are safe and sanitary. Almost 82% of respondents feel that their organization matches their skills with the needs of their jobs and 76% are satisfied with their workplaces’ maintenance/cleaning conditions. A substantial group (80%) of employees feel they are contributing to the organization’s productivity, and the great majority (83%) of employees revealed that having an important job is extremely important to be productive.

The first impression is that the collaborators seem to be aware of the importance of standard human capital management procedures and conditions oriented to the reinforcement of organizational performance. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that there is a need to address an organizational ‘black box’, an aim of the current study, that is, the set of subjective and behavioral components to promote QWL that can directly influence employees’ feeling of contribution to organizational performance, especially concerning productivity.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. After a literature review leading to formulation of the research hypotheses, the research methodology is presented. Next, the results are discussed, followed by the conclusions, limitations and implications.

2. Literature Review and Research Hypotheses

2.1. revealing the relationship between organizational performance and qwl.

There is no simple or universally recognized definition of what performance is at the level of an individual organization. Organizational performance is multidimensional, connected to its goals and objectives, and may be defined as an organization’s ability to use its resources efficiently, and to produce outputs that are consistent with its objectives and relevant for its users [ 12 ]. Analyzing organizational performance is a crucial step in the organizational assessment process [ 13 ]. In doing so, in the literature of reference, three main domains of organizational performance have been reported, namely: financial performance; operational performance; and organizational effectiveness [ 14 ]. Concerning the conceptualization of organizational performance, four main elements should be taken into consideration: effectiveness; efficiency; relevance; and financial viability [ 13 ].

People are the organization’s most important asset [ 15 ], and so the way an organization manages people’s impacts has a major influence on organizational performance [ 16 ].

Performance management is a continuous process of identifying, measuring and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning performance with the organization’s strategic goals [ 17 , 18 ]. The previous arguments are examples of cornerstone visions regarding the need to advance the knowledge available on subjective and behavioral components affecting the relationship between organizational performance and QWL.

Nevertheless, various performance management systems are found in the literature and these systems have some advantages, such as: increased motivation to perform; increased self-esteem; managers gain insights into subordinates; organizational goals are made clear; employee misconduct is minimized; organizational change is facilitated; motivation and commitment to stay in the organization are increased; and employee engagement is enhanced [ 19 ]. In fact, performance management systems are the source of information when making decisions about rewards and the allocation of resources, succession planning and staffing strategies [ 20 ].

Each employee’s emotional intelligence has an effect on behavior which ultimately affects achievements and performance in the workplace [ 21 ]. The satisfaction of employees’ needs through organizational development is at the core of the QWL movement [ 22 ]. Enhancing QWL will result in improved productivity, and in turn, gains in productivity will strengthen QWL [ 3 ].

Improving QWL and performance is of extreme importance, as productivity and innovation are part of the political agenda of European Union countries. With fewer people in the workforce due to an aging population there is a need to enhance labor productivity [ 23 ]. The quality of work life is covered in the guidelines for the employment policies of member states [ 24 ].

Previous applied empirical work [ 25 ] pointed out the existence of a positive and significant relationship between QWL and organizational performance, as well as a positive and significant association between QWL and employees’ job satisfaction.

Another study [ 26 ] found that employee commitment partially mediates the relationship between QWL and organizational performance; and also unveiled that work environment significantly affects employee commitment and thus organizational performance. It was also advocated that improving the QWL of an organization could achieve a heightened job satisfaction, commitment and also improved performance [ 27 ]. In order to achieve a higher employee commitment and consequently a better organizational performance, it is suggested for managers to pay attention to the different dimensions of QWL [ 26 ].

In contrasting terms, previous scholars [ 28 ] reported a negative but non-significant relationship between QWL and organizational performance, although it was also found a positive relationship between employee’s job satisfaction and organizational performance. This type of mixed evidences raises the interest for advancing knowledge about still unexplored subjective and behavioral components of the QWL and their influence on organizational performance.

2.2. Exploring Subjective and Behavioral Components of QWL

Quality of life is an elusive concept regarding the assessment of societal or community well-being from specific evaluation of individual or group cases [ 29 ]. The literature has associated a high quality of life with higher levels of productivity at the workplace. Therefore, increasing attention has been paid to the role played by occupational stress, including job demands, job control, job insecurity, organizational justice, intra-group conflict, job strain, effort-reward imbalance, employment level and shift work. In turn, this has been correlated with factors that negatively affect quality of life, namely insomnia, which results in impaired work performance and leads to significant productivity losses for organizations [ 30 ].

Quality of life is modulated by a wide range of factors, among them psychosocial parameters, health conditions and well-being in the workplace, as well as the adequacy of working resources and infrastructures provided. Policies and regulations created based on employees’ individualized considerations have suggested significant productivity improvement due to subjective components, such as trust, commitment, satisfaction and control. Nevertheless, the research opportunity remains to deepen knowledge about the role played by both subjective and behavioral components of QWL.

For instance, social support, reflecting individuals’ integration into a social group, has been reported as an important indicator of quality of life in occupational performance [ 31 ]. Infrastructures also have an important role in providing well-being in the workplace and therefore modulating the quality of life. It has been suggested that providing green lawns in urban areas enhances quality of life in the workplace, maximizing employees’ social interaction, physical activity and connection with nature [ 32 ]. Shiftwork has been reported as worsening the quality of life [ 33 ].

Cooperative decision making, adequate recognition and supportive supervisors are considered fundamental to QWL [ 34 ], with appropriate job performance feedback and favorable relations with supervisors being said to have a direct impact on QWL [ 35 ]. Another study [ 36 ] goes further and reveals that supervisory behavior is the most important component of QWL, contributing to the variance in the employee’s role efficacy by as much as 21%.

Considering the previous statements in the literature, the following research hypothesis is derived:

Workers who feel that they are supported and appreciated by their supervisors are more likely to feel that they contribute to the organization’s productivity.

QWL is considered a multi-dimensional construct with no clearly accepted definition of the term. This subjective definition means accurate measurement of its parameters is complex. QWL differs from job satisfaction [ 2 ], as job satisfaction is considered one of the outcomes of QWL. In turn, QWL is mainly associated with job satisfaction, motivation, productivity, health, job security, safety and well-being [ 37 ].

Following [ 1 ], QWL involves four major parts: a safe work environment; occupational health care; appropriate working time; and fitting salary. According to [ 2 ], QWL involves the effect of the workplace on satisfaction with the job, satisfaction in non-work life domains, and satisfaction with overall life, personal happiness and subjective well-being.

The factors relevant to employees’ QWL include the social environment within the organization, the relationship between life on and off the job, the specific tasks they perform and the work environment [ 38 ].

Providing safe and healthy working conditions aims to ensure the employee’s good health, thus, taking measures to improve QWL is expected to increase employee’s motivation ultimately leading to the enhancement of performance and productivity [ 38 ].

Accordingly, a work environment that is able to fulfill the employee’s personal needs will lead to an excellent QWL [ 39 ].

Thus, the following research hypothesis is considered:

Workers who feel that they are integrated in a good working environment are more likely than others to feel that they contribute to the organization’s productivity.

Researchers have proposed differentiated models concerning QWL. For example, in [ 39 ] a model is proposed in which the needs of psychological growth were connected to QWL. The same authors recognized several needs: skill variety; task identity; task significance; autonomy; and feedback.

In [ 2 ], a model is originally proposed founded on five critical key-factors concerning the satisfaction of workers’ needs, namely: (i) work environment; (ii) job requirements; (iii) supervisory behavior; (iv) ancillary programs; and (v) organizational commitment.

The second vision is highly valued in organizations committed to playing a responsible role in society, since QWL benefits the employee’s pride, social commitment, satisfaction and the organization’s contribution to society [ 11 , 40 ]; and can also be positively influenced by organizational support, for instance by relieving fatigue and enhancing self-efficacy [ 41 ].

QWL has been considered as the condition experienced by the individual in terms of the dynamic pursuit of their hierarchically organized goals within work domains, whilst reducing the gap separating the individual from these goals can have a positive impact on the individual’s general quality of life, organizational performance, and consequently on the overall functioning of society [ 42 ].

Furthermore, QWL is a phenomenon that can originate a change in terms of organizational culture, since the former corresponds to employees’ interpretation of all the conditions in a workplace and their perception of those conditions [ 43 ].

In a related vein, QWL can be approached as an indicator of the overall quality of the human experience at work [ 44 ]. The same author advocates that it creates a favorable workplace, which enhances employee well-being and satisfaction.

Employees that feel they are treated with respect by people they work with, and employees who feel proud of their job, increase their feeling of belonging to the company, thus feeling that they are an asset to the organization [ 45 ]. Studies [ 46 , 47 ] found that feeling respected is a predictor of QWL, together with self-esteem, variety in daily routine, challenging job, autonomy, safety, rewards and good future opportunities; and as already mentioned an improved QWL is expected to lead to a higher productivity [ 48 ].

Considering the previous vision, the QWL construct can be completed by incorporating subjective measures related with employee satisfaction, motivation, involvement and commitment with respect to their lives at work [ 49 ]. In the same vein, QWL corresponds to the degree to which individuals are able to satisfy their important personal needs while employed by the firm. This gives rise to the following research hypothesis:

Workers who are respected as professionals are more likely than others to feel that they contribute to the organization’s productivity.

Employees can experience a better QWL if they have a positive perception of the degree of responsibility of the organization they belong to [ 50 ]. A related study about perceived QWL in Croatia found that employees positively value non-competitive, co-operative work environments for improved quality of life [ 51 ]. In addition, factors like job security, human relations and work-life balance influence QWL positively [ 52 ]. The analysis of the first European Quality of Life Survey found also that positive aspects of work (good rewards, job security, favorable career prospects and interesting work) have a greater impact on life satisfaction and particularly job satisfaction [ 53 ]. In turn, it should be noted that a poor work-life balance lowers employees’ quality of life [ 53 ].

Work-life balance has been positioned in the reference literature as a key component of QWL [ 38 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ], but it deserves to be noted that the employee’s level of emotional intelligence could influence his/her work-life balance [ 59 ].

It should be noted also that in a previous empirical study [ 60 ] no significant association, neither positive nor negative, between work-life balance and productivity was detected.

Nevertheless, Work-life balance plays an important role in overall life satisfaction and influences experiences in work life by increasing job satisfaction and organizational commitment [ 61 ]. A high level of engagement in work life is likely to produce a positive effect in work-life balance, which can be further enhanced by goal attainment in work life [ 62 ]. Accordingly, the following research hypothesis is derived:

Workers who have the possibility to enjoy the adoption of work-life balance practices in their organizations, are more likely than others to feel that they contribute to the organization’s productivity.

QWL involves acquiring, training, developing, motivating and appraising employees in order to obtain their best performance, in accordance with the organization’s objectives [ 28 ]. QWL is the foundation of employee well-being and leads to better performance [ 26 ].

Skills, occupational improvement and opportunity for training are considered sub components of QWL [ 45 , 63 , 64 ]. The development of skills and abilities can improve job satisfaction and overall QWL, and for its turn QWL can influence the employee’s performance [ 65 , 66 ]. Thus, employees expect to develop their skills and get promoted, ensuring a better performance for the organization [ 67 ]. In turn, training is an activity aimed at enhancing performance, by ensuring the opportunities for development of skills and encouragement given by the management team [ 38 ].

As previously revealed through the empirical evidence obtained in [ 68 ], both QWL and motivation influence employees’ performance positively. High levels of QWL lead to job satisfaction, which ultimately results in effective and efficient performance [ 49 ]. Considering the previous statements and empirical evidence, the following hypothesis is derived:

Workers who feel that their organizations invest in their careers, for example through continuous learning, the development of new skills or supporting professional growth, are more likely to feel that they contribute more than others to the organizations’ productivity.

3. Empirical Approach

3.1. methodology and data characterization.

The research methodology was developed using different questionnaires, which were designed taking into consideration a set of eleven selected international benchmarks, namely: (i) Health and well-being at work: a survey of employees, 2014, UK, Department for Work and Pensions; (ii) ACT Online Employee Health and Wellbeing Survey 2016, Australian Capital Territory Government; (iii) British Heart Foundation 2012, Employee survey; (iv) British Heart Foundation 2017, Staff health and wellbeing template survey; (v) Rand Europe (2015), Health, wellbeing and productivity in the workplace—Britain’s Healthiest Organization summary report; (vi) South Australia Health, Government of South Australia Staff needs assessment, Staff health and wellbeing survey; (vii) Southern Cross Health Society and BusinessNZ, Wellness in the Workplace Survey 2017; (viii) State Government Victoria, Workplace Health & Wellbeing needs survey; (ix) East Midlands Public Health Observatory, Workplace Health Needs Assessment for Employers, February 2012; (x) Tool for Observing Worksite Environments (TOWE). U.S. Department of Health & Human Services; and (xi) Measure of QWL, as originally proposed in [ 2 ].

The survey was conducted from April to July 2018. Twelve partners from Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Portugal, Greece and Spain participated in data collection, by interviewing employees. The sample covers 15 private companies and five public entities or large firms per partner, involving two employees per organization and totaling 514 questionnaires. It was not intended to interview company owners or general managers to avoid bias in the responses.

A convenience sample procedure based on random selection was used. In each organization, a contact person was identified to ensure completion of the questionnaire, which was afterwards validated by the research team. The questionnaires were applied by personal interviews to ensure a maximum response rate.

The partners followed the following instructions in selecting interviewees: 15 companies among micro, small and medium-sized firms (10% of interviewees for each category—EU definition of SME), plus five among large firms and public entities.

The main aim of the study is to assess the influence of workers’ QWL on the perception of their contribution to organizational performance. The degree of novelty here lies in the innovative assessment of both subjective and behavioral components of workers’ QWL, embracing different types of organizations (e.g., public or private) with distinct dimensions and economic activities. A total of 514 questionnaires were collected involving organizations from the six European countries engaged in the data collection process.

The questionnaire includes two sections: (1) QWL (needs, work environment, work requisites, supervisor behavior, auxiliary programs inside the organization, organizational pressure, and organizational performance and commitment); and (2) sample characterization (gender, age, marital status, position in the organization, level of qualifications, organization’s sector of activity, size and age of the organization, type of employee contract and employee qualifications). In the first section, Likert scales (e.g., ranging from 1 to 7) were used to assess the level of agreement with a set of sentences in each sub-section, scales that had been transformed into binary considering the variables under analysis, namely the Feeling of contributing to productivity, Supervisors’ support, Good work environment, Professional respect and Work-life balance. In the second section, levels of answer were used. Below, the sample is characterized and a set of results for the whole sample is presented.

3.2. Sample Characterization

Sample and descriptive statistics.

Concerning respondents’ gender, 48% were women and 52% men. Relative to age, 9% were aged between 20 and 25, 34% between 26 and 35, 37% between 36 and 45, 14% between 46 and 55 and only 7% were older than 55. 35% were single, 59% married and almost 7% are in another non-defined situation. In terms of organizational role, 18% said they occupied a managerial role inside the organization, 67% a qualified role and 16% a non-qualified position. Regarding education, 51% have a college degree and 22% a post-graduate degree, 19% completed secondary education, 7% completed 9 years at school and only 1% completed 4 years. Concerning the sector of activity of the respondents’ organizations, almost 2% belong to the primary sector, 14% to the secondary, 77% to the tertiary and 7% to public organizations. The majority of respondents work in small and medium sized firms, 26% in companies with one to nine employees, 39% in firms with 10 to 49, 15% in companies with 50 to 249, 14% in companies with 250 to 1000 and 6% in companies with over 1000 employees. Concerning the organizations’ age, 16% are between 1 and 6 years old, 34% between 7 and 15 years, 25% between 16 and 29, almost 17% between 30 and 49 years and almost 8% have been in existence for more than 50 years. Concerning respondents’ contract type, 68% said they have a permanent contract, 11% a contract for a stipulated period, almost 9% were temporary, 5% were freelancers and 9% reported another sort of contract. Lastly, respondents were asked about their qualification inside the firm, with almost 7% saying they were senior managers, 10% intermediary managers, almost 17% staff in charge, 21% highly qualified employees, approximately 25% qualified, 6% semi-qualified and 8% non-qualified. In addition, 3% said they were apprentices and 1% said they did not know.

In descriptive terms, for the employees, it is observed that the items in which they feel more in agreement in their workplaces are professional respect as workers and people (70%), followed by the existence of a good work environment (65%), as seen in Table 1 presented below. For 62% of respondents having the supervisors’ support is essential. Approximately 37% denote the importance of having a work-life balance and 57% show that the organizations’ support for skills development is essential. Approximately 80% of the workers feel they really contribute to the organization’s productivity. Looking at the correlations matrix we can observe that the items most associated with the workers’ sense of contribution to the organizations’ productivity are professional respect, having a good work environment, and lastly supervisors’ support.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Matrix.

Source: Own elaboration. Significance levels: * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.0. SME: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

The variables presented above were subsequently used in estimation processes, considering two distinct models: (1) an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model; and (2) a Multinomial Logit model; in order to reveal the set of subjective and behavioral components of QWL that influence the workers’ perception of contribution to productivity. The main reasons for using the two models are as follows: (i) estimation of the OLS model is justified by the dataset analyzed following normal distribution, considering a dependent variable represented in binary terms, which can determine the probability of the influence of a hypothetical set of independent variables arising from the literature review presented above; the dependent variable takes the value of 1, when the employee states they feel they contribute to productivity; and 0, otherwise; and (ii) estimation of the multinomial model can test a representation at level of the same dependent variable, which lets us, first, contrast the empirical evidence with Model 1, and secondly, determine the variability of the probability of influence of the same hypothetical set of independent variables, through comparison of the results between a baseline corresponding to: ‘not contributing to productivity’ (level 1); ‘contributing to productivity to some extent’ (level 2); and ‘totally contributing to productivity’ (level 3).

To do so, the log-odds for these two categories relative to the baseline are computed, and then the log-odds are considered as a linear function of the predictors. Several control variables were used, namely: gender; age; marital status; employee’s role; employee’s education; organization’s sector; organization’s size; organization’s age; and employee’s position in the organization. The operational model of analysis is as follows ( Figure 1 ):

QWL and Feeling of Contribution to Productivity: Operational model of analysis (Source: Own elaboration).

Table 2 below presents more details and description of the set of variables.

Variables description.

Source: Own elaboration.

4. Results and Discussion

Regarding the results of the OLS regression for the sample considered (see correspondent column of Model 1, in Table 3 ), which used as dependent variable the feeling of contribution to productivity, with the value of 1 when the worker declares they feel they contribute to productivity and 0 otherwise, the LR Chi 2 of 14.38 with a p -Value of 0.0000 indicates that the model as a whole is statistically significant.

QWL: Subjective and behavioral components influencing employees’ feeling of contribution to productivity.

Source: Own elaboration. Significance levels: * p < 0.10. ** p < 0.05. *** p < 0.0; Standard errors in brackets. LR Chi 2 : Likelihood Ratio (LR) Chi-Square test; Prob. > Chi 2 : The prob > chi2 statistic for the overall model is a test of the joint null hypothesis that all of the regression coefficients (other than the constant term) are zero.

As observed in Table 3 below, three statistically significant variables influence workers’ sense of contribution to productivity, namely: (i) professional respect; (ii) having a good work environment; and (iii) feeling supervisors’ support. Interestingly, work-life balance and the organization’s skills development support do not have any significant influence on the feeling of contribution to the organizations’ productivity.

Moreover, from the control variables tested in the first model, it should be noted that employees’ college education level has a significant and positive effect on their feeling of contribution to productivity.

In Model 2, the likelihood ratio quotient of 22.06 with a p -Value of 0.0002 signals that the model as a whole is statistically significant. Here, a set of predictors related to collaborators’ sense of contribution to productivity (computing a categorical variable with three levels: 1, not contributing to productivity; 2, contributing to productivity to some extent; and 3, totally contributing to productivity; are considered in the empirical application.

Regarding the sense of contributing to some extent to organizations’ productivity, only work-life balance denotes a significant, although negative, influence. Moreover, the older the workers are the more likely they are to feel somehow productive to their organizations. Concerning level 3, representing the feeling of totally contributing to the organization’s productivity, workers feeling respected by their companies, sensing that their organizations make them feel confident and value their contribution affects in a positive and significant way the high level of feeling they contribute to firms’ productivity. Workers who feel they are highly productive are also older and those occupying managerial roles and direction positions in their organizations

Contrasting the two estimation processes, we conclude that the OLS model reveals most predictors explaining workers’ feeling of contribution to productivity, by detecting positive and significant influences of 3 out of 6 subjective and behavioral components of QWL. Going deeper, it is important to crosscheck what predicts the collaborator’s feeling of lack of contribution to productivity, in order to improve the management capacity of human capital, following a behavioral approach.

Bearing in mind the set of research hypotheses under examination, new insights arise concerning the subjective and behavioral components of QWL influencing employees’ feeling of contribution to productivity.

Thus, model 1 gives support to H1a, as workers who feel they are supported and appreciated by their supervisors feel they contribute more to the organizations’ productivity than others. These findings are in line with prior findings of [ 30 ], stressing the importance of workers being supported and appreciated for increased productivity.

Model 1 supports H2, as we detect a significant and positive influence of good workplace environments, by being safe and sanitary, on workers’ feeling of productivity. Such results are aligned with prior studies which detected a positive association between job security, safety and well-being at the workplace and job productivity, satisfaction and motivation [ 37 ], and the existence of a safe work environment and its positive impact on productivity [ 1 ]. These results are aligned with prior literature, which found that by being involved in a socially supportive group inside the workplace, employees are more likely to contribute to organizational performance [ 31 ]. In the same line of reasoning, a study referred to previously, applied to the Croatian context [ 51 ], identified an important impact of co-operative working environments on QWL.

We found support for H3, as workers who feel respected as professionals (in Models 1 and 2) contribute more to organizations’ productivity than others. In Model 1, our empirical findings reveal a positive and significant influence of workers being professionally respected on the sense of feeling productive. Regarding the findings of Model 2, this influence is also important but only for the group of workers who feel they contribute greatly to the organization’s productivity. This corroborates the rationale of the model proposal found in [ 39 ], which outlined that the needs for psychological growth covering the different frameworks associated with professional valorization and respect (namely, skill variety, task identity and significance, autonomy and feedback) are connected with QWL and thus performance. Moreover, our results ratify the concluding remarks of previous scholars [ 11 , 40 ], who defended that employees’ sense of pride and commitment, in relation to being valued as professionals, increases their contribution. These visions are also in agreement with previous empirical findings denoting a positive effect of the worker being considered and taken into consideration in the organizations’ goals on performance [ 42 ].

Concerning H4, which states that workers who have the possibility to enjoy the adoption of work-life balance practices in their organizations, feel they contribute more to the organizations’ productivity than others, no significant evidence is found in Model 1. Moreover, in Model 2 we detect a significant, although negative, effect of employees’ feeling that the organization has a work-life balance vision on the feeling of contributing to productivity and so this hypothesis is rejected. This can be justified by the lack of work-life balance practices on the part of supervisors and the organization itself, as well as possible development of a negative emotion concerning the work-life balance allowance, which in certain organizational contexts could be interpreted as a mode of diminishing the potential leadership responsibilities given to target-workers.

The results are contrasting, but do not reject the previous findings in [ 52 ], which argued for a positive association between work-life balance and quality of work life, thus spurring productivity. In a similar vein, achieving a balance between private and professional life is expected to be positively associated with organizational commitment and, thus, with productivity at work [ 61 ]. In fact, the empirical findings obtained here not only do not contradict the previously identified positive association between work-life balance and QWL, but also shed some light on ‘invisible ceiling’ issues related with the gender leadership issue and supervisors’ behavior within the organizational context, which need to be further explored in future research concerned with organizational productivity based on the individual behavior (of supervisors and workers) and subjective well-being influenced in the scope of the organizational context’s boundaries.

We found no support for H5, stating that workers who feel their organizations invest in their careers and skills development, for example through continuous learning, the development of new skills or supporting professional growth, contribute more to organizations’ productivity than others. Interestingly, our findings do not seem to be related with prior work, for example, in [ 39 ], which pointed out an association between professional valorization (skill variety), QWL and performance, as well in [ 28 ], where positive argumentation was given to reinforcing investment in employees’ training, to be able to achieve better performance levels in the future. This contrasting result could be justified by the productivity measure used, being a subjective measure, concerning the perception of being productive. These results also contrast with prior literature defending a positive association between organizational investment in workers’ management and organizational performance [ 16 ], as well as paying attention to employee management systems, aligning the goals of the organization with career decisions, rewards, structured growth and thus impacting positively on workers and organizations’ performance.

5. Conclusions

This study analyses, in an innovative way, the influence of subjective and behavioral components of QWL on organizational performance, measured through collaborators’ feeling of contribution to the organization’s productivity. The empirical findings show the importance of factors related with workers having their supervisors’ support, integration in a good work environment and feeling respected both as professionals and as people.

One of the research challenges addressed here, in a pioneering way, is the use of a subjective measure of collaborators’ commitment to organizational productivity, attempting to provide new implications for organizational management, taking into account components that were hitherto unexplored empirically, various subjective and behavioral components that require greater knowledge to address, in an alternative way, improved organizational performance and behavioral drivers of productivity, rather than relying exclusively on increasing collaborators’ remuneration.

Adopting a more behavioral line of organizational management, and integrating the emerging literature on the QWL construct originally proposed in [ 7 ], this analysis contributes to the literature on QWL and organizational performance, bringing two axes of reasoning founded on new empirical evidence, namely: (1) identifying factors that can influence organizational performance, represented here by an alternative measure referring to the collaborator’s feeling of contributing to the organization’s productivity; and (2) proposing a new agenda for human capital managers, focusing on the importance of subjective and behavioral components of QWL, which can help to strengthen productivity in the organizational context, following a behavioral approach both at the company and individual level.

Regarding implications, the evidence obtained signals that human capital managers committed to reinforcing organizational productivity through changing the behavior of collaborators and the organization itself should seek to fulfill a new strategic action agenda with the following priorities: (1) fostering an organizational culture that values behavioral practices of supervisor respect for the collaborator (i.e., hierarchical subordinates) in the organizational context; (2) promoting positive emotions and feelings in collaborators that they are appreciated in the workplace; (3) ensuring that supervisors protect collaborators from hazardous conditions, to reduce feelings of uncertainty and risk; and (4) giving importance to the duties and tasks performed by collaborators.

Surprisingly, this study does not present additional evidence to the established view pointing towards the importance of having a work-life balance and companies’ support for workers’ skills development in the contribution to workers’ productivity. This may be justified, on the one hand, by the content of the research question included in the original survey used in the current study that allows us to point out a hypothetically negative feeling concerning the leadership responsibilities given to target workers, without valuing in a proper way the required work-life balance. Nevertheless, there is still great room for improvement as regards promoting the subjective conditions tending to strengthen behaviors oriented towards stimulating organizational productivity, especially, addressing gender issues, balanced management of the trade-offs between personal and professional life; and leadership responsibilities, per gender role.

The main limitations of the analysis concern the impossibility of carrying out a study with a time dimension, which could determine hypothetical relationships of causality (or precedence) between subjective and behavioral components and organizational performance. Another limitation is in relation to the response variable representing organizational productivity being based on a subjective measure of the collaborator’s perception of individual contribution to organizational productivity. Nevertheless, considering the difficulty in obtaining data of a subjective nature and the aims of this study, it seems acceptable to consider this alternative measure of the organization’s non-economic performance, which requires future exploration through additional research.

In a related vein, this opens an avenue for tracing further research endeavors, expanding both the number of objective and subjective metrics, in order to gauge the hypothetical differences in the relationships established between QWL’s components and organizational performance, “measured” in objective or subjective terms. This would imply the design of a new questionnaire targeted to assess the feelings of the leaders regarding the performance of workers, and, afterwards, it will be possible to produce a contrasting analysis.

For the future, more thorough study of the relationship between QWL and organizational productivity is suggested, by making a comparative analysis involving different profiles of organizational culture considering other contexts of organizational location, for example, in America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australasia. In this line of analysis, it would also be interesting to pursue this topic considering different organizational and corporate governance contexts, for example, multinationals, family control, female management, management with ethnic diversity and management with values. Another avenue of future research would be the possibility, in the organizational context, of using new forms of organizational design and management able to change behavior in a subjective, inclusive and participatory way. It is necessary, therefore, to explore how design thinking, organizational gamification and co-creation can mobilize the collaborator to contribute effectively to improved organizational performance.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the highly valuable comments and suggestions provided by the editor and reviewers, which contributed to the improvement in the clarity, focus, contribution, and scientific soundness of the current study. A special debt of gratitude is also due to the track chair and participants in the 17th Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS), 2019, which took place in the University of Granada, Spain, for providing us with constructive feedback and positive incentives to improve the presentation of the research results, which are used as the empirical basis of this manuscript.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.L.; Formal analysis, D.P. and Â.G.; Methodology, J.L. and D.P.; Writing—original draft, J.L., D.P. and Â.G.

This research has received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

What is in the name? Content analysis of questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work life

• Open access
• Published: 12 June 2021
• Volume 56 , pages 1045–1072, ( 2022 )

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• Renaud Gaucher   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3387-142X 1 &
• Ruut Veenhoven   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5159-393X 1 , 2  

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There is a great demand for information on how workers evaluate the quality of their jobs. In response to this demand, a multitude of questionnaires has been developed, which are presented under different names and stress different aspects of work life. It is therefore difficult to see what questionnaire is best suited to one’s information demand. This problem can be solved by considering the content of the different questionnaires through the same conceptual lens, focussing on the meaning of each of the constituting questions separately. In this paper, we adapted Veenhoven’s conceptualization of qualities of life in general to the work setting, which gave us a matrix of 9 nested notions of perceived quality of a worker’s work life, and then used this matrix to classify the meaning addressed in 12 questionnaires. Some of these questionnaires appear to address a clear meaning, while others cover a mix of meanings. These contents are presented in a tabular overview here to allow users to select the questionnaire the most adapted to their needs. This approach can also be used to develop new questionnaires on perceived quality of work life.

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1 Introduction

1.1 practice of measurement of perceived quality of work life.

A lot of work has been done on how workers evaluate the quality of their job. An advanced search in Google Scholar on October 20, 2020, yielded the following hits on related terms: ‘satisfaction with work’: 26,000 hits ‘job satisfaction’ 1,710,000, ‘quality of work’ 300,000, ‘happiness at work’ 6210, ‘work happiness’ 3540, ‘employee happiness’ 3130, ‘employee wellbeing 10,900 and ‘well-being at work’ 6240.

In addition to this academic research, there is commercial trade in the measurement of perceived quality of work designed to serve the information demands of organizations. One of the reasons for this demand is that an understanding of workers’ subjective perceptions of the quality of their work provide management with indications of the objective quality of the workers’ work conditions and the need to invest in improving these conditions. Another reason for this demand is that managers expect that satisfied workers will be more productive and less inclined to report sick or quit. Therefore, managers want to know whether investments in worker satisfaction are required and which aspects of the work situation they should focus on. A related reason is that dissatisfied workers tend to demand compensatory pay rises, both by individual workers and in collective bargaining situations with trade unions. In addition to these material concerns, there is also the moral requirement for managers to have an interest in the worker’s wellbeing. Such information is increasingly quantified in the reports of ‘social accountability’ of organizations.

There is also a more general interest in how workers typically see the quality of their work and in particular how satisfied they are with their job. The average annual hours worked in 2017 was 1759 in OECD countries. This means that the satisfaction experienced in these hours will affect the general satisfaction climate in a country, and this is likely to affect acceptance of the prevailing socio-economic order. Consequently, satisfaction with work is also a standard topic in national social reports, such as the Quality of American Life (Campbell et al. 1976 ) and the Enquête sur la qualité de vie (INSEE 2011 ).

The practice of measuring quality of one’s work has resulted in a plethora of questionnaires, such as the Quality of Working Life Systemic Inventory (Martel and Dupuis 2006 ), the Quality of Work Life Measure (Sirgy et al. 2001 ) the Work-Related Quality of Life scale (Van Laar et al. 2007 ), the Generic Job Satisfaction Scale (Macdonald and MacIntyre 1997 ) and the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector 1985 ). In addition to these ‘general’ measures of quality of work life, there are questionnaires tailored to specific occupations, such as for teachers the Questionnaire of Teachers’ Work Life Quality (Javadi et al. 2019 ) and the Teacher Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Lester 1987 ), and for nurses the Brooks and Anderson’s ( 2005 ) quality of nursing work life questionnaire and the Nursing Home Nurse Aide Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (Castle 2007 ).

This variety in the types of questionnaires available for the measurement of self-perceived quality of one’s work life also exists for other domains of life, such as one’s health, which is often measured using multi-item questionaires on ‘Health-Related-Quality Of Life’ abbreviated HRQOL and also referred to as Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO). A ‘general’ measure of this kind is the 100-item Rand Health Insurance Study Questionnaire (Brook et al. 1979 ), best known in its shortened 36 item version SF36 (Ware and Sherbourne 1992 ), a disease-specific questionnaire on one health condition for cancer patients is the EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire (EORTC 2020 ).

1.2 Uncertainty about meanings measured

It is not always clear what questionnaires actually measure. Common names of questionnaires such as the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ; Weiss et al. 1967 ) and the Job Descriptive Index (JDI; Smith, Kendall & Hulin, 1969 ) are not very informative. There is typically more information contained in the names given to subscales in a questionnaire, such as the sub-scale ‘flow and intrinsic motivation’ in Singh and Aggarwal’s ( 2018 ) Happiness at Work Scale, however, the notions referred to in such names are often not well defined.

In theory, scale development starts from a clear concept and researchers select items that validly tap into this concept. In this vein MacKenzie et al. ( 2011 ) divide the development of a questionnaire into 10 steps: (1) development of a conceptual definition of the construct, (2) generation of items to represent the construct, (3) assessment of the content validity of the items, (4) formal specification of the measurement model, (5) data collection to conduct pretest, (6) scale purification and refinement, (7) data gathering from new samples and re-examination of scale properties, (8) assessment of the scale validity, (9) cross-validation of the scale, and (10) development of norms for the scale. In practice, however, there is often not a clearly defined concept at start, but rather a fuzzy notion as the following review of definitions illustrates.

Notions of worker wellbeing

The quality of work life (QWL) has been defined in different ways and typically not very sharply. Carlson ( 1983 ) considers that QWL is a goal, an ongoing process for achieving that goal, and a concept of management. The goal of QWL is to create more involving, satisfying, and effective jobs and work environments for people at all levels of an organization. The basic idea of QWL as a concept of management is that a climate has to be fostered in which the fundamental human dignity of all members of the organization is recognized. Nadler and Lawler ( 1983 ) consider that QWL is a way of thinking about people, work, and organizations; QWL consists of two distinct elements: concern for the impact of work on people and organizational effectiveness, and the idea of fostering participation in organizational problem solving and decision-making. Kiernan and Knutson ( 1990 ) see QWL as a philosophical commitment to the development of an interactive relationship between employee and employer. Their main question is: ‘What must we do to meet the needs and expectations of all involved, such that people in organizations will have healthy work relationships?’ For a review of the definitions of QWL, see Bagtasos ( 2011 ) who notes that the quality of work life in organizations is usually measured using the level of satisfaction of employees. This practice involves a conceptual shift to the worker’s perspective.

Job satisfaction would seem to be a more discrete concept, but definitions also differ in this case and lack clear boundaries. Hoppock ( 1935 ) introduced the concept of job satisfaction and defined it as a combination of psychological, physiological and environmental circumstances that cause a worker truthfully to say that he or she is satisfied with his or her job. Locke ( 1969 ) defines job satisfaction as the pleasurable emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job as achieving or facilitating the achievement of one's job values. Spector ( 1997 ) is the clearest in his definition: job satisfaction is ‘the degree to which people like their jobs’. For a review of the definitions of job satisfaction, see Aziri ( 2011 ).

Rather than departing from a sharp a-priory definition, some researchers start from a ‘sensitizing’ notion and distil meaning later from the clusters they see in the intercorrelations of items they deemed indicative for this ambiguous matter. It means that they let psychometrics decide what they should have decided before using psychometrics. An example is the debate about the structure of the MSQ (Fields, 2002 ), where meanings are changed from a researcher to another and are elaborated after the development of the questionnaire. This kind of debates arises from differences in samples, techniques of correlational analysis researchers used and their interpretations of observed clusters.

1.3 Limitations to correlational identification of meaning

Questionnaire development depends heavily on correlational analysis, assuming that correlations in response to questions mean that these questions measure the same thing. Although this will often be the case, it is not always true; e.g. body weight and body length are correlated, they are not the same. Correlations can also be spurious, driven by a common third factor. This is particularly problematic in the measurement of ill-defined syndromes of interrelated causes and effects as is the case here. This fundamental problem cannot be solved using mathematically sophisticated methods.

Correlational analysis also is of limited use in assessing validity. If we lack a clear concept of what we are testing, we cannot directly assess whether the questionnaire adequately measures the concept it is supposed to measure. Hence validity testing is limited to indirect indications, such as whether the questionnaire measures the same thing (substantive validity), differs from other phenomena (discriminant validity), and correlates with related matters in the future (predictive validity). Such an analysis only tells us whether a questionnaire taps a distinct phenomenon, but not what this phenomenon is.

1.4 Identifying meanings in the text of questions

The first steps in scale development after deciding about the definition of the construct are generation of items to represent the construct and assessment of the content validity of these items. These steps are often covered too briefly in the articles, and not well explained in comparison to the correlational analysis. MacKenzie et al. ( 2011 ) recommend Hinkin and Tracey’s ( 1999 ) procedure. In this technique, researchers construct a matrix in which definitions of different aspects of the construct domain are listed at the top of the columns and the items are listed in the rows, then judges are asked to rate the extent to which each item captures each aspect of the construct domain using a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (completely). To our knowledge, the Hinkin and Tracey’s procedure is rarely followed.

1.5 How we charted meanings addressed in questionnaires on quality of one’s work life

In this paper, we inspected questionnaires’ content in retrospect by looking at the items through the lens of a well-defined conceptual grid. We did this in the following three steps:

step 1: define different qualit ies of work life

step 2: assess which of these qualities are addressed by the separate items in questionnaires on quality of work life

step 3: present the results of the above two steps in a schematic overview.

Our approach could be described as a refinement of the non-mathematical part of the procedure suggested by Hinkin and Tracey ( 1999 ) to assess the content validity of items or a technique to use before using Hinkin and Tracey ( 1999 ) technique. In our approach, the rating is not mathematical and the choices that are made have to be clear and explained. Unlike Hinkin and Tracey ( 1999 ), we provide a matrix and rules for writing items according to each category of the matrix.

1.6 Plan of this paper

We distinguish different qualities of work life in Sect.  2 , this is step 1 in our approach. We present how we selected the questionnaires on quality of work life and assessed which of these qualities are addressed by separate items in these questionnaires in Sect.  3 , this assessment is step 2. We present the results for each questionnaire in Sect.  4 , this is step 3. We discuss the results and the strengths and weakness of our approach in Sect.  5 .

2 Qualities of work life

The term ‘quality of life’ is misleading since there is no one quality of life. The term is in fact an umbrella for different qualit ies of life. Below we distinguish several such qualities in work life to obtain a conceptual grid which we can use to compare the contents of questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work life.

2.1 Veenhoven’s conceptualization of qualities of life

Several distinctions for qualities of life have been proposed, each with their own merits (Phillips 2006 ), however, for the task at hand here, we must choose one perspective. In this paper we orient ourselves on Veenhoven’s ( 2000 , 2009 ) distinction between four qualities of life and his subsequent distinctions of four kinds of satisfaction and two components of life satisfaction.

2.1.1 Four qualities of life

Many different terms are used to describe human quality of life (QOL), such as ‘well-being’, ‘happiness’ and ‘thriving’. Veenhoven identifies four meanings addressed using these terms, distinguishing between:

opportunities for a good life and the outcomes of life

external qualities and internal qualities.

A combination of these two dichotomies yields a fourfold matrix which we present in Scheme 1 .

Veenhoven’s ( 2000 ) matrix of the four qualities of life

Livability of the environment . The left top quadrant of Scheme 1 denotes the meaning of good living conditions. Often the terms 'quality-of-life' and 'wellbeing' are used in this particular meaning, especially by ecologists and sociologists. Economists sometimes use the term 'welfare' for this meaning. 'Livability' is a better word, because it refers explicitly to a characteristic of the environment and does not carry the connotation of Paradise. Politicians and social reformers typically stress this quality of life.

Life-ability of the person . The right top quadrant of Scheme 1 denotes inner life chances. That is, how well we are equipped to cope with the problems of life. This aspect of the good life is also known by different names. Doctors and psychologists especially use the terms 'quality of life' and 'wellbeing' to denote this specific meaning. There are more names, however. In biology the phenomenon is referred to as 'fitness' and this term aptly coveys the message that abilities must be seen in the context of environmental demands. On other occasions life-ability is denoted by the medical term 'health', in the medium variant of the word. In positive psychology, the term ‘eudaimonic’ happiness is often used to denote this meaning, particularly in juxtaposition to ‘hedonic’ happiness. This quality of life is central in the thinking of therapists and educators.

Utility of life . The left bottom quadrant of Scheme 1 represents the notion that a good life must be good for something more than itself. This presumes some higher value, such as ecological preservation or cultural development. In fact, there is a myriad of values on which the utility of life can be judged. There is no current generic for these external results of a life. Gerson ( 1976 ) referred to these kinds of results as 'transcendental' conceptions of quality of life. Another appellation is 'meaning of life', which then denotes 'true' significance instead of mere subjective sense of meaning. Veenhoven ( 2000 ) refers the simpler 'utility of life', admitting that this label may also give rise to misunderstanding. Moral advisors, such as pastors, emphasize this quality of life.

Satisfaction with life . Finally, the bottom right quadrant of Scheme 1 represents the inner outcomes of life. That is the quality of a life in the eye of the beholder. As we deal with conscious humans, this quality boils down to subjective appreciation of life. This is commonly referred to by terms such as 'subjective wellbeing', 'life satisfaction' and 'happiness' in a limited sense of the word. There is no professional interest group that stresses this meaning.

2.1.2 Four kinds of satisfaction

Veenhoven ( 2009 ) expands on the concept of satisfaction in a later publication and distinguishes four kinds of satisfaction, thus creating a sub-matrix within his earlier matrix of four qualities of life. Veenhoven distinguishes between:

passing and enduring satisfactions

satisfaction with life aspects and satisfaction with life as a whole.

Combining these distinctions produces the following fourfold matrix, shown in Scheme 2 .

Four kinds of satisfaction

Instant satisfaction . The top left quadrant of Scheme 2 denotes passing pleasures, such as the enjoyment of a meal or appreciation of art. Kahneman ( 1999 ) calls it 'instant utilities’ and pleas for the measurement of these using techniques of multiple moment assessment.

Satisfaction with parts of life . The top right quadrant in Scheme 2 denotes enduring appreciation of parts of life. That can concern aspects of life, such as how exciting one’s life is and domains of life, such as one’s marriage. Although part-satisfactions depend on a continuous flow of instant satisfactions, they have some continuity of their own, one can remain satisfied with one’s marriage in spite of an incidental row.

Top experience . The bottom right quadrant in Scheme 2 represents the combination of passing experience and appraisal of life-as-a-whole. Top experience involves short-lived but quite intense feelings and the perception of being part of a wider whole.

Life satisfaction . The bottom-right quadrant in Scheme 2 denotes the combination of enduring satisfaction and appraisal of one’s life-as-a-whole. In Veenhoven’s terminology life satisfaction is synonymous with ‘happiness’. The above conceptual differentiations were in fact made to end up with a clear delineation of that concept.

2.1.3 Two components of life satisfaction

As a last step in his conceptual specification of quality of life, Veenhoven ( 2009 ) argues that ‘when evaluating the favorableness of our life, we tend to use two more or less distinct sources of information: our affects and our thoughts’ and he refers to the sub-evaluations made by individuals on this basis as ‘components’ of an overall evaluation of a life. The affective component of life satisfaction is how well we feel most of the time and is called ‘hedonic level of affect’. The cognitive component is the extent to which we think that life brings us what we want and is called ‘contentment. This view is presented schematically in Scheme 3 .

Components of life satisfaction

In Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) theory of happiness, hedonic level of affect reflects the gratification of universal innate needs while cognitive contentment reflects the meeting of culturally variable, learned wants. Recent research has confirmed Veenhoven’s expectation that the affective component dominates in the overall evaluation of life (Kainulainen et al. 2018 ).

2.2 Adaptation of Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) conceptual matrices to the work setting

Veenhoven’s taxonomies of quality of life and life satisfaction concern life at large. In this section we apply his conceptual matrices to a particular life domain, that is, work life.

2.2.1 Four qualities of work life

If we adapt Veenhoven’s matrix of the four qualities of life to the work setting, we obtain the matrix presented in Scheme 4 .

Four qualities of work life

The matrix differentiates between:

opportunities for a good work life, i.e. work conditions and work-ability vs outcomes of work, i.e. utility of work and satisfaction with work

qualities outside the workers, i.e. work conditions and utility of their work, and qualities inside the workers, i.e. their work-ability and satisfaction with work.

Livability of work conditions . The top-left quadrant of Scheme 4 denotes the work situation and includes the demands involved in the work tasks as well as physical and social conditions on the work floor and the social prestige of the job. This aspect of the quality of work life is typically stressed by trade unions and work safety agencies.

Work-ability of the worker . The top-right quadrant in Scheme 4 denotes the worker’s capabilities, such as his/her physical and mental health, technical knowledge and interpersonal skills. This aspect of the quality of work life is central for HR departments and occupational health services.

Utility of work . The bottom left quadrant in Scheme 4 is about what the work brings to a worker beyond profit to his or her wider environment and concerns the degree to which his or her products serve human needs and her or his social and ecological impact. This aspect of the quality of work is often addressed in motivational speeches and in ‘social impact reports’ of organizations. It is often difficult to discern rhetoric from reality.

Satisfaction with work . The bottom right quadrant in Scheme 4 refers to the inner outcome of work life on the worker in terms of satisfaction. This is a concern for the workers themselves in the first place and one of the drivers of their behaviour at work. It is for this reason that employers are keen to monitor the satisfaction in their workforce.

2.2.2 Four kinds of work satisfaction

If we adapt the matrix of the four satisfactions to the work setting, we obtain the following matrix, presented below in Scheme 5 .

Four kinds of work satisfaction

Instant satisfaction at work . The left-top quadrant in Scheme 5 denotes passing satisfactions such as contact with colleagues or the feeling of accomplishment once a task is done. Bakker and Oerlemans ( 2016 ) refer to this matter as’ momentary happiness at work’. Instant satisfactions are not always positive, and also cover such things as irritations and tiredness.

Satisfaction with parts of work life . The top-right quadrant in Scheme 5 represents enduring satisfaction with parts of one’s work life. In addition to classical satisfaction with parts of one’s work life such as satisfaction with wages and satisfaction with management, there is satisfaction with aspects of work such as satisfaction with the meaningfulness of the work or the degree to which it encourages self-development.

Top experience at work . The left-bottom quadrant is about top experiences, that is, short-lived ‘highs’. States of extasis are not common on a work floor but less intense states of ‘flow’ are. Flow involves the experience of being immersed in one’s work and performing at one’s best. Flow occurs more during work than during leisure (Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre 1989 ).

Overall satisfaction with work life . The bottom-right quadrant in Scheme 5 denotes the combination of enduring work satisfaction and appraisal of one’s work life-as-a-whole. As, in Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) terminology life satisfaction is synonymous with ‘happiness’, we could say that job satisfaction and overall satisfaction with work life are synonymous with happiness at work.

2.2.3 Components of job satisfaction

Analogous to the distinction made between components of life satisfaction in Sect.  2.1.3 , we can distinguish an affective and a cognitive component in overall satisfaction with work life similar to that presented in Scheme 3 . The affective component is called hedonic level of affect at work and the cognitive component contentment at work, see Scheme 6 .

Components of job satisfaction

2.2.4 The conceptual grid in total

See Scheme 7 .

The quality of work life matrix

Having defined a set of aspects of the qualities of a work life, we can now proceed to see which of these are addressed in current questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work. As a first step we selected some of these questionnaires, then we read each item of each questionnaire carefully to see which aspects of quality of work life were addressed.

3.1 Selection criteria for questionnaires

The selection criteria we used to select questionnaires were the following:

the questionnaire was about perceived quality of one’s work life

the questionnaire was about the current job of the respondents, not their whole career

the questionnaire was available in English language

the questionnaire was submitted to minimal psychometric testing, which could include a factorial analysis, the calculation of the Cronbach’s alpha, etc.

the full text of the questionnaire was available as freeware

In order to cover the field, we considered questionnaires presented by their authors under three different names: quality of work life, job satisfaction and happiness at work. Quality of work life and job satisfaction are two names commonly used in questionnaire development in organizational psychology, while happiness at work is a new name commonly used in positive psychology. To keep this illustrative exercise manageable, we limited ourselves to 12 questionnaires: 5 under the name of quality of work life, 5 under the name of job satisfaction, and 2 under the name of happiness at work. Very few questionnaires on happiness at work exist. We had no exclusion criteria (Online Appendix).

3.2 Rating of questions

We, the two authors of this article, read each item of each questionnaire carefully and located each item in the quality of work life matrix (see Sect.  2.2.4 ). We did not calculate an interjudge coefficient, as we preferred another option: we had to agree on the reason why we choose a categorization for each item. If we disagreed at first, we had to discuss until we found the most compelling argument, in practice an argument powerful enough to allow us to agree on this argument and then on the location of the item. We have three reasons to justify this option. One, an interjudge coefficient just explains to what extent judges have agreed, it does not tell how to sort the items. Two, judges can sort an item into the same category for different reasons. Three, and this is the main reason, the why is more important than the where, because the quality of a categorization depends on the quality of the reason for this categorization.

3.3 Some decision rules

We present below some decision rules we followed to classify the items of the selected questionnaires.

Instant satisfaction at work . To be coded as such, the item should (1) refer to the immediate present, the timeframe is usually given by the lead question, and (2) deal with emotional experience. We have a broad acceptance of what an emotion is although it would be possible to consider basic emotions only (Ekman 1999 ).

Satisfaction with parts of work life . The items should (1) link to a specific domain, not work as a whole, and (2) refer to satisfaction explicitly. The statement can be made in the item itself, in the lead question or in the response options.

Let us compare the two following items: ‘I am satisfied with my work hours’ and ‘There is a balance between work life and private life’. In the first option, satisfaction is clearly expressed, while one cannot be 100% sure in the second option as to the extent the respondent is satisfied with his or her work hours. A worker could be satisfied if he or she works less or more; thus, the second item would be rejected. Satisfaction can be an emotional experience rather than a cognitive evaluation. For example, ‘I enjoy contact with my colleagues’.

Top experience at work . The items must be about short-lived intense feelings at work, perception of the wholeness or flow at work. Items should be written to target the framework for which they are written directly, and not written to target the framework indirectly, because targeting indirectly can be confusing. An item such as ‘I experienced a feeling of flow at work’ is written to target the goal of covering flow at work directly, while an item such as ‘I am joyful at this specific moment of my workday’ does not target the goal of covering flow at work directly. This second item directly expresses the fact of experiencing the positive emotion of joy, not flow at work, thus the second item would be rejected.

Overall satisfaction with work life . The items should be (1) about work-life as a whole and (2) denote satisfaction.

Hedonic level of affect at work . Items on hedonic level of affect at work differ from items on instant satisfaction at work in that the timeframe can be almost everything but the immediate present. An example of an affect focussed question would be “I feel typically fine at work’.

Contentment with work . Items on contentment with work denote the presence or the lack of a gap between the work life a worker has and the work life he or she wants. An example of an item on contentment with work would be ‘My work falls short to my wants’.

Livability of work conditions The item must be (1) about the state of work conditions, and (2) not about satisfaction with it. The second feature is important because items on the livability of work conditions can be easily confused with items on satisfaction with parts of work life.

Work-ability of the worker . The items must be about capabilities such as physical health, mental health, knowledge, and skills. It does not matter whether satisfaction is expressed or not, because the work-abilities of the worker are not domains of satisfaction with parts of work life.

Utility of work . The items must be about (1) utility for society, humankind or moral perfection, and (2) not about satisfaction with this aspect of work. If an item denotes satisfaction with societal utility of work, then the item denotes a satisfaction with parts of work life.

We used a colour code to show to what extent the items of a questionnaire are part of a quadrant of the quality of work life matrix. A quadrant coloured in red indicates that more than half of the items were located in this quadrant. A quadrant coloured yellow indicates that few items, proportionally, i.e. less than 50%, were located in this quadrant. A white quadrant indicates that there are no items located in this quadrant.

Let us imagine that a study of the items in an imaginary questionnaire leads us to draw the matrix shown in Scheme 8 . This matrix indicates that our imaginary questionnaire measures the livability of work conditions, satisfaction with parts of work life and hedonic level of affect at work, and that the items about satisfaction with parts of work life represent 50% or more of the items of the questionnaire.

How QWL matrix is used to locate our imaginary questionnaire

3.4 Some illustrative cases of content classification

Categorizing an item into the QWL matrix can be complicated and debatable, however, if we want to select the right questionnaires or improve the development of questionnaires, we need to categorize items. Below we justify our categorization of 10 items because we want to be transparent about the reasons of our choices and remind readers that our choices are open to debate.

Note: a justification for all 246 items we considered is given in the online appendix.

3.4.1 Items from questionnaires under the name of ‘quality of work life’

‘I feel that I am realizing my potential as an expert in my line of work’ (Sirgy et al. 2001 ).

We categorized this item in the quadrant work-ability of the worker. This item does not tell us anything about the current job of a worker and its influence on the realization of the potential of the worker unlike the item in the same questionnaire ‘I feel that my job allows me to realize my full potential’; here a direct causal link is expressed from the work conditions to the realization of the worker’s potential. We also categorized the item ‘I feel that I’m always learning new things that help do my job better’ in the quadrant work-ability of the worker for the same reason.

‘A strong trade union is required to protect employees’ interests’ (Swamy et al. 2015 ).

We categorized this item as miscellaneous, i.e. outside the matrix. The item expresses a political opinion on the importance of trade unions in employees-employer relationship, and, as relevant this opinion can be, it does not give us any insight into the livability of work conditions inside the organization of a worker who responds to this item.

‘I am ready to take additional responsibilities with my job’ (Swamy et al. 2015 ) .

We categorized this item in the quadrant work-ability of the worker. The item is not about the perception of the worker on the livability of his or her work conditions, but about his or her perception of his or her ability to take on new responsibilities.

‘I feel well at the moment’ (Van Laar et al. 2007 ).

We categorized this item as miscellaneous. There is no mention of the work setting in the item and no leading question that shows that the item falls within the work setting before the item. Thus, the item is about the psychological health of the person in general, not just at work. Items such as ‘Recently, I have been feeling unhappy and depressed’ and ‘I am satisfied with my life’ were categorized in a similar manner.

3.4.2 Items from questionnaires under the name of ‘job satisfaction’

‘How do you feel about your job?’ with response options ranging from 1 (‘delighted’) to 7 (‘terrible’) (Andrews and Withey 1976 )

We categorized this item in the quadrant overall satisfaction with work life. The word ‘work’ can be used in two ways: one to denote the job itself and two, to denote the job as a whole, i.e. the work life of a worker. We considered that the second meaning may be more appropriate. Andrews and Whitey use the expression ‘the job itself’ in another item, however, this item comes after the item we analysed here in their questionnaire.

‘How satisfied are you with your present job when you consider the expectations you had when you took the job’ (Bacharach et al. 1991 )

We categorized this item in the quadrant contentment with work. Contentment with work is about the distance between one’s real work life and one’s idea of an ideal work life. Here the item deals with the distance between the workers’ expectations when hired and the reality of their job. We consider that the breath of meaning of this quadrant could, however, be broadened in light of this item and others such as ‘It seems that my friends are more interested in their jobs’ (Brayfield and Rothe 1951 ) and ‘How satisfied are you with your present job when you compare it to jobs in other organizations’ (Bacharach et al. 1991 ). The reason for categorizing the item in the quadrant contentment with work is that each of these items contains an idea of distance, comparison between the workers’ current job as a whole and jobs or other things.

‘All my talents and skills are used’ (Macdonald and Maclntyre 1997 ).

We categorized this item as miscellaneous, because the context of the item was not clearly stated. Talents and skills could be used in leisure time. An example of clear writing for this item would be ‘My work allows me to use all my talents and skills’.

‘I like doing the things I do at work’ (Spector 1985 ).

We categorized the item in the quadrant satisfaction with parts of work life. The item is about the tasks that a worker does at work and the verb used is ‘like’, like is used here as a mark of appreciation.

3.4.3 Items from questionnaires under the name of ‘happiness at work’

‘At my work, I remain inspired and try to inspire others as well’ (Singh and Aggarwal 2018 ).

We categorized this item as miscellaneous, because it is a double-barreled item. An item should have just one direction, and this can be divided into two items: ‘at my work I remain inspired’, and ‘at my work, I try to inspire others as well’. We would have classified the item ‘at my work I remain inspired’ as representative of the hedonic level of affect at work, and the item ‘at my work, I try to inspire others as well’ as representative of work-ability of the worker.

‘My organization provides all necessary training and information to complete work on time’ (Singh and Aggarwal 2018 ).

We categorized this item in the quadrant of the livability of work conditions, because it represents subjective appreciation of a worker’s work conditions. There is no degree of satisfaction explicitly stated in the item. An item about satisfaction with parts of work life would be: ‘I am satisfied with the training and information my organization provides me to complete work on time’.

Using the QWL matrix, close reading and transparent justification of the categorization of items, we analysed each item of 12 questionnaires: 5 under the name of QWL, 5 under the name of job satisfaction, and 2 under the name of happiness at work. Questionnaires on happiness at work are rare for now.

4.1 Five questionnaires under the name of quality of work life

4.1.1 elizur and shye ( 1990 ).

Elizur and Shye ( 1990 ) developed a 16-item scale on QWL, based on the idea that QWL has two facets: one, mode of functioning, expressive, integrative, adaptive and conservative; and two, fields of functioning, psychological, physical, social and cultural.

Placed in the QWL matrix the 16 items of Elizur and Shye’s questionnaire appear to be all about the livability of work conditions.

4.1.2 Martel and Dupuis ( 2006 )

Martel and Dupuis ( 2006 ) developed the Quality of Working Life Systemic Inventory (QWLSI), a 33-item scale on the QWL. In this work, each item is about satisfaction with a part of work life.

Placed in the QWL matrix all 33 items appear to be about satisfaction with parts of work life. In each item the respondents are asked how ‘happy’ they are with a specific domain of work life. Aspects of work life are understood in this questionnaire in a broad sense: facilities, i.e. day care, access to restaurants, parking, etc., and union relation are considered to be part of the work life.

4.1.3 Sirgy et al. ( 2001 )

Sirgy et al. ( 2001 ) developed a 16-item scale, named the Quality of Work Life Measure. The measure was designed to capture the extent to which the work environment, job requirements, supervisory behaviour, and ancillary programs in an organization are perceived to meet the needs of an employee.

Placed in the QWL matrix 13 items appear to be about the livability of work conditions, 2 items about the work-ability of the worker and 1 item about satisfaction with parts of work life.

4.1.4 Swamy et al. ( 2015 )

Swamy et al. ( 2015 ) developed a 49-item scale on QWL with 9 dimensions: work environment, organization culture and climate, relation and co-operation, training and development, compensation and rewards, facilities, job satisfaction and job security, autonomy of work, and adequacy of resources.

Placed in the QWL matrix 43 items appear to be about the livability of work conditions, 2 items about the hedonic level of affect at work, 1 item about the work-ability of the worker, and 1 about overall satisfaction with work life. Two items had to be categorized as miscellaneous, that is outside the QWL matrix.

4.1.5 Van Laar et al. ( 2007 )

Van Laar et al. ( 2007 ) developed the Work-Related Quality of Life scale. The scale contains 23 items and 6 dimensions: job and career satisfaction, general well-being, home–work interface, stress at work, and control at work and working conditions.

Placed in the QWL matrix the 9 items appear to be about the livability of work conditions, 3 items about the work-ability of the worker, 3 items about satisfaction with parts of work life, 2 items about the hedonic level of affect at work and 6 items had to be categorized as miscellaneous, outside the QWL matrix.

4.2 Five questionnaires under the name of job satisfaction

4.2.1 andrews and withey ( 1976 ).

Andrews and Withey developed a 5-item questionnaire to measure overall job satisfaction, and Rentsch and Steel ( 1992 ) validated the psychometric properties of this questionnaire.

Placed in the QWL matrix 4 items appear to be about satisfaction with parts of work life and one item about overall satisfaction with work life.

4.2.2 Bacharach, et al. ( 1991 )

Bacharach et al. ( 1991 ) developed a 5-item scale to put an emphasize on the match between expectations and perceived reality for broad aspects of a job taken as a whole.

Placed in the QWL matrix 3 items appear to be about contentment with work and 2 items about satisfaction with parts of work life.

Note: Bacharach et al.’s scale shows a limit of our approach. Contentment with work is about the distance between one’s real work life and one’s ideal work life. One item in Bacharach et al.’s scale is about the distance between the real job and jobs in other organizations, while another is about the distance between the worker’s expectations when hired and the reality of the job.

4.2.3 Macdonald and Maclntyre ( 1997 )

Macdonald and Maclntyre ( 1997 ) developed the Generic Job Satisfaction Scale, a 10-item and one-dimension scale on job satisfaction. The items are described as being focused on the employees’ feelings or reactions towards aspects of their jobs.

Placed in the QWL matrix 6 items appear to be about the livability of work conditions, 2 items about the hedonic level of affect at work, and 2 had to be categorized as miscellaneous.

4.2.4 Spector ( 1985 )

Spector developed the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), a 36-item scale and a nine-subscale measure of job satisfaction. He states that this scale is applicable specifically to human service, public, and nonprofit sector organizations. The nine subscales are pay, promotion, supervision, benefits, contingent rewards, operating procedures, co-workers, nature of work and communication.

Placed in the QWL matrix 26 items appear to be about livability of work conditions, 7 about satisfaction with parts of work life, 2 about hedonic level of affects at work and 1 about utility of work.

4.2.5 Weiss et al. ( 1967 )

Weiss et al. ( 1967 ) developed the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). Two forms exist, the long form that consists of 100 items and the short form that consist of 20 items. We studied the short-form questionnaire. The short-form questionnaire consists of three subscales: intrinsic satisfaction, extrinsic satisfaction and general satisfaction.

Placed in the QWL matrix all the items appear to be about satisfaction with parts of work life.

4.3 Two questionnaires under the name of ‘happiness at work’

4.3.1 salas-vallina et al. ( 2016 ).

Salas-Vallina et al. ( 2016 ) consider happiness at work to be an umbrella concept mixing work engagement, job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment, and used three independent scales to measure happiness at work: the Utrecht Work Engagement Footnote 1 Scale (UWES—Schaufeli et al. 2002 ), the Job Satisfaction Index (JSI—Schriesheim and Tsui 1980 ), and the Affective Commitment Scale (ACS—Allen and Meyer 1990 ). The UWES was developed to measure work engagement and is made up of three dimensions: vigour, dedication and absorption. The JSI was developed to measure satisfaction with 5 job conditions and job satisfaction as a whole. The ACS was developed to measure one of the Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of organizational commitment, affective commitment. Together the three scales account for 31 items.

Placed in the QWL matrix 11 items appear to be about satisfaction with parts of work life, 6 items about work-ability of the worker, 5 items about instant satisfaction at work, 2 items about overall satisfaction with work life, 1 item about the livability of work conditions, 1 item about the hedonic level of affect at work and 1 item about utility of work. We also considered that 4 items may not belong to the large and integrative concept of QWL, and we categorized these items as miscellaneous.

4.3.2 Singh and Aggarwal ( 2018 )

Singh and Aggarwal ( 2018 ) developed the Happiness at Work Scale. The questionnaire has 12 items and 4 dimensions: flow and intrinsic motivation, work repulsive feelings, supportive organizational experiences, and unsupportive organizational experiences.

Placed in the QWL matrix 5 items appear to be about the livability of work conditions, 2 about the hedonic level of affect at work, 1 about the work-ability of the worker, 1 about utility of work, 1 about satisfaction with parts of work life work domain and 1 about overall satisfaction with work life. One item was classified as miscellaneous. Almost half of the items measure the livability of work conditions.

4.4 The overall picture

We present an overview of the contents of the 12 questionnaires in Table 1 , and results are discussed in the next section .

5 Discussion

5.1 which questionnaire for which topic.

Some of the analysed questionnaires measure one quality of work life, this is the result of a lead question that gives a context that fits a specific quality or repetition in the writing of each item. The Elizur and Shye questionnaire ( 1990 ) measure the perceived livability of one’s work conditions. The Martel and Dupuis ( 2006 ) and the Weiss et al. ( 1967 ) questionnaires measure satisfaction with parts of work life.

Most questionnaires measure more than one quality of work life while measuring a main quality. Sirgy et al. ( 2001 ), Swamy et al. ( 2015 ), Macdonald and MacIntyre ( 1997 ) and Spector ( 1985 ) questionnaires mainly measure the livability of work conditions. The Andrews and Whitey questionnaire ( 1976 ) mainly measures satisfaction with parts of work life, and the Bacharach et al. ( 1991 ) questionnaire mainly measures contentment with work.

Some questionnaires measure more than one quality and do not measure a main quality in particular, in our case the Salas-Vallina et al. ( 2016 ) and the Singh and Aggarwal ( 2018 ) questionnaires.

5.2 What do names of questionnaires tell?

We selected questionnaires presented under three different names. Do these names convey different contents or are they merely brand names? A look at Table 1 shows little systematic difference between most questionnaires and their content, at least when considered through the lens of our conceptual grid. Hence prospective users of questionnaires need to do more than just look at their names.

5.3 Limitations of the method

Our method has at least 4 limitations. One, our results depend on the conceptual lens we used, that is, our adaptation of Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) distinction of 9 qualities of life to the work setting. An avenue for future research would be to consider other matrices and to compare their application on this same set of questionnaires.

Two, certain items may be difficult to categorize, that is to find a decisive argument to justify the choice made for their categorization. This issue may signal that the item is fuzzy, which is not a limitation of our method, but an advantage, however, this does point to the difficulty of being able to place any item into a specific matrix, in our case the QWL matrix.

Three, any categorization of items depends on the judgements made by the judges doing the categorization. It is possible for judges to find an argument that they think decisive in the moment and not to see a better argument that would help them make another choice about how to categorize an item. This is why transparency and debate are important in this field.

Four, even if judges find the best argument to make the right choice to categorize an item, it is possible that respondents to the questionnaire read other meanings in items than educated judges do.

5.4 Uses of this method

Our approach can be used in two ways: 1) to select existing questionnaires for use in research or HR practice, and 2) to develop a new questionnaire on perceived quality of work life.

5.4.1 For users of questionnaires

Common users of questionnaires on perceived QWL consist of researchers, HR departments, consulting firms and HR apps. It is important for researchers to select questionnaires that are adapted to their needs because the quality of their results and their research depends on the quality of the items of the questionnaires they have chosen. It is also important for HR departments, consulting firms and HR apps to select questionnaires that are adapted to their needs because the quality of the recommendations and the data-driven HR policies depends on the results obtained using the chosen questionnaire(s).

To select a questionnaire, users must, first, decide what information they need. The conceptual matrix presented here provides an overview of possible topics and can as such help a prospective user to get a clearer view of what information might be useful for them. Once they are more aware of these necessities, they can use the method to select the questionnaire that best meets these.

5.4.2 For creators of questionnaires

For researchers, the method presented here is just an additional technique that can be used to develop better questionnaires in conjunction with the usual psychometric techniques, preferably in the first stage of questionnaire development. For example, the item response theory (IRT) may help questionnaires developers develop items and can be used along with our approach, however, the IRT cannot bring the degree of semantic analysis present in our approach, as we argued in Sect.  3.4 .

For HR departments, consulting firms and HR apps, that often do not use psychometric technique in questionnaire development, our method might be the major tool to devise questionnaires that meet their information needs.

One has to decide on which conceptual framework to orient to develop a new questionnaire in this way, such as on the matrix used in this paper. The next step is then to generate new items and, or use existing items when they fall within the framework chosen. The substantive contents of the questionnaire are then clear from the beginning; the psychometric properties come second in this process.

5.5 Further research

Now we have demonstrated that the method discussed here can be used to reveal contents of questionnaires that are often not well visible for potential users, a next step is to apply our method to more questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work life. The results of these analyses can be presented in an online archive from which users can select the questionnaire that fits their information needs best. This archive could also contain information about psychometric properties and benchmarking data. Such a questionnaire library does not yet exist on perceived QWL questionnaires to our knowledge.

A collection of this kind will allow academics and practitioners to check whether questionnaires that stand out as the most clear-cut conceptually also perform better on the usual correlational validity tests, the limitations of which we discussed in Sect.  1.3 . In which questionnaires are substantive clarity and statistical validity found together and in which cases are they not?

Another line for further research is to consider alternative conceptual matrices. In this paper, we used Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) classification of qualities of life, which worked well when applied to questionnaires on the quality of work life, however, this conceptualization is not the only possible conceptualization, and researchers can try different conceptual lenses. Whether such alternative matrices will provide us with a better view on the contents of QWL questionnaires depends, among other things, on the clarity of the distinctions made. This clarity should reflect in the agreements of the raters who apply these matrices.

6 Conclusions

There is a multitude of questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work life. These questionnaires address different qualities of work life in different combinations, and their titles typically tell us little about their contents. A comparative content analysis of a large number of questionnaires is required to choose the questionnaire that best fits an organization’s information needs. This in turn requires a well-defined conceptual grid, which can be done using the adaptation to the work setting of the Veenhoven’s ( 2009 ) conceptual distinction of 9 qualities of life.

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Gaucher, R., Veenhoven, R. What is in the name? Content analysis of questionnaires on perceived quality of one’s work life. Qual Quant 56 , 1045–1072 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-021-01165-z

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ISSN : 1026-4116

Article publication date: 10 March 2022

There is a compelling need for developing constructs in management science rather than adapting the constructs that have been developed in other domains. Having emerged in the 1950s, quality of work-life (QWL) measures have proved to be ineffective due to the lack of conceptual clarity and theoretical support. The article analyses the QWL measures highlights their coherence and verifies them for being used in specific contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

The study includes three stages to develop a QWL Measurement Scale. Fourteen questions were developed based on QWL concepts. They were validated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) which split the dimensions into five factors. A survey was conducted on 375 medical residents. Finally, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), convergence and validity were tested along the five dimensions.

Results extend the QWL concept and provide theoretical support for the same. Five dimensions were developed to measure QWL namely: pay and benefits, supervision, intra-group relations, working conditions and training.

Practical implications

The study may offer an overview of evaluation strategies to researchers and organizations that aim to improve employee QWL while they enhance its effectiveness through reliable instruments.

Originality/value

The scale developed in this study contributes to the body of QWL literature in the healthcare arena. It may be beneficial to carry out further research in this domain.

• Scale development
• Scale validation
• Second-order analysis

Zaman, S. and Ansari, A.H. (2022), "Quality of work-life: scale construction and validation", Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEAS-07-2021-0118

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Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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