engleski

Individual differences and tolerance to shiftwork: canonical analysis

Several characteristics of workers have been proposed as individual-difference variables underlying tolerance to shiftwork. Tolerance to shiftwork itself is a multidimensional construct that includes variables regarding subjective health, characteristics of sleep and tolerance to a specific shift. This study examined the concurrent relations between these two sets of variables. Canonical correlation analysis was used in order to get information about the number of links between the sets and patterns of interdependency that join them. A group of 604 male oil-refinery workers was examined. The mean age of participants was 32 years (range = 19-61) and shiftwork experience 10 years (range=1-38). They worked in a 2:2:3 continuous three-shift system with starting time of morning shift at 6 hours, afternoon shift at 14 hours, and night shift at 22 hours. The set of characteristics of workers included ten individual-difference variables: age, efficiency and relaxedness assessed by the BAQ, vigorousness/languidness and flexibility of sleeping habits measured by the CTI, neuroticism and extraversion measured by the EPI, two dimensions of type A-B behaviour measured by the JAS, and morningness-eveningess measured by the AMEQ. The set of tolerance to shiftwork indices included four variables of subjective health (musculo-skeletal, respiratory and psychosomatic-digestive complaints, and generally poor health measured by the HIQ), two variables regarding tolerance to a specific shift (morning shift and night shift tolerance measured by the WLQ), and five sleep variables regarding duration and quality of sleep. Five significant links were found between characteristics of workers and indices of shiftwork tolerance. Correlations with the first variate pair indicated that better night shift tolerance, which was related to better sleep quality and subjective health, poorer morning shift tolerance, shorter sleep on morning shift and longer sleep on afternoon shift, was reported in younger workers who also tended to report a higher degree of relaxedness, emotional stability, eveningness and flexibility of sleeping habits. The second variate pair revealed that reports of better morning shift tolerance, longer sleep on morning shift and shorter sleep on afternoon shift, less psychosomatic-digestive complaints but poor sleep quality, were reported in older workers who also reported a higher degree of efficiency, morningness, emotional stability, vigorousness and flexibility of sleeping habits. Results from the third variate pair revealed that better night shift tolerance reported with shorter sleep on morning shift and days off was related only to higher vigorousness. This study points to several characteristics of workers that have concurrent validity for prediction of tolerance to shiftwork, which could be assessed by paper and pencil questionnaires.

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