Studies are required to establish the organisational, occupational and individual determinants of minor psychiatric disorder among NHS employees.

The authors used a longitudinal design to investigate the relation between leadership behavior and the well-being of subordinates. Well-being is conceptualized as people's feelings about themselves and the settings in which they live and work. Staff members (N = 562) of 2 Community Trusts participated 4 times in a 14-month period. Five models were formulated to answer 2 questions: What is the most likely direction of the relation between leadership and well-being, and what is the time frame of this relation? The model with the best fit suggested that leadership behavior and subordinate responses are linked in a feedback loop. Leadership behavior at Time 1 influenced leadership behavior at Time 4. Subordinate well-being at Time 2 synchronously influenced leadership behavior at Time 2. Leadership behavior at Time 4 synchronously influenced subordinate well-being at Time 4.

Objectives. The aim of this paper is to describe the development and refinement of nine measures of perceived work characteristics for use in studies of the psychological wellbeing of health services employees. The constructs measured are: autonomy/control, feedback, influence, leader support, professional compromise, role clarity, role conflict, peer support and work demands. Design. The study was a large scale cross‐sectional survey. Methods. National Health Service Trust staff were selected from seven major occupational groups (nurses, doctors, administrative staff, managers, professions allied to medicine, professional and technical staff, and ancillary staff) within a sample of Trusts chosen to be representative of those in England. Questionnaires incorporating the scale items were completed by over 9,000 staff. The fit with the a priori nine‐dimensional measurement model was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Scale internal reliabilities and norms were calculated, and aspects of construct validity were examined. Results. The findings show a good fit to the measurement model for the sample as a whole and across occupational groups. All the scales exhibit acceptable internal reliabilities; and normative data is provided for all seven occupations (with norms for more specific job categories available on request). Analyses suggest good construct validity, showing the scales discriminate as anticipated across occupational groups and job categories, and they have the expected relationships with job satisfaction and psychological strain. Conclusions. The measures developed are usable for research purposes across the major occupational groups, with the possible exception of ancillary staff. Further work is desirable to confirm the measurement properties and extend the normative database.

Psychiatric interviews were carried out to validate the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12;Goldberg, 1972) for use with staff of England's National Health Service (NHS), and to determine the appropriate threshold score to identify probable cases. In a sample of 551 NHS staff, the correlation between the GHQ-12 and the Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised (CIS-R) was found to be .70. The receiver operating characteristic showed that a 3/4 threshold, higher than used in all but one previous study, gave the best conservative estimate of minor psychiatric morbidity. This threshold gave an estimated sensitivity of the GHQ-12 of .69 and specificity of .88. It reduced case rates by between 8% and 17% as compared with lower possible thresholds. Convergent and discriminant validation of the GHQ-12 was demonstrated through comparison with other measures of mental and physical health.The General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12; Goldberg, 1972) is a self-administered screening measure for the detection of minor psychiatric disorder (i.e., nonpsychotic psychological impairment) in community and nonpsychiatric clinical settings. The questionnaire is designed to be maximally sensitive to changes in normal functioning and to differentiate psychiatric cases from noncases. Caseness here refers to the probability that an individual has a minor psychiatric disorder, given that the distribution of assessed symptoms is unlikely to show a sharp dichotomy of cases and noncases. Criteria for establishing caseness are based on threshold scores, which are likely to vary with types of samples and settings (Tarnopolsky, Hand, McLean, Roberts, & Wiggins, 1979). Our aims in this study were to establish criterion validities and appropriate threshold scores for the GHQ-12 administered in the workplace to England's National Health Service (NHS) employees.The criterion validity of mental health screening questionnaires is most commonly investigated through comparison with an estab-