The Effects of Occupational Status on Physical and Mental Health¹

Job Satisfaction Researches of 1962

“…Results of the investigations reported in this article and listed in the bibliography suggest the presence or absence of relationship between job satisfaction and the following topics: ability [2,23]; absenteeism [12,23]; achievement [3,8]; administration [J, 11,2]]; advancement [2,[10][11][12]; age [2,10,22,25]; aspirations [2,3,8,23,25]; attitudes [4,5,11,22]; automation [3,12,14]; autonomy [17,18,26]; colleagues [4,11,16,20,25]; creativity and opportunity for selfexpression [11,16,26]; education [2,12]; efficiency [J, 26]; ego-involvement [26]; experience [1,23,25]; fatigue [12]; freedom and independence [J, 10, 16, 25]; health <...>…”

“…Kasl and French [8] suggested that "if job satisfaction is seen as a partial indicator of broadly defined mental health, then the frequently obtained positive relationship between reported job satisfaction and the rank or status of the respondent's job may be treated as further evidence concerning the negative relationship between status and mental illness." They added, however, that perhaps achievement alone is not the most important factor in the relationship.…”

“…Those readers particularly interested in the intrinsic job factors related to job satisfaction should read [2,3,5,7,8,10,15,16,18,[25][26][27].…”

Social behaviour and the use of medical services.

“…The dividing line is between able and leading seaman; this is the first promotion at which serious selection by merit occurs. In several civilian studies (Park and Kidd, 1961;Kasl and French, 1962) sickness has seemed to be inversely related to job-status. The difference between the average number of "fresh complaints" made by offenders and non-offenders is not significant when senior ratings are considered, but is significant for junior ratings (X' = 5* 3; P <0 05).…”

An Environmental Approach to Mental Health

“…It has been presumed that a variety of environmental factors from nutrition to housing and crowding are involved. More recently, Kasl and French (1962) have shown that, in one company, status differences between groups account for more than two-thirds of the between group variance in frequency of dispensary visits. Further findings suggest that much of this is mediated through a chain of self-esteem variables.…”