Work-Related Stress Risk Assessment

Abstract

Many approaches to work-related stress risk assessment suggest the integration between a phase where objective data are collected and analyzed, and a phase where results of data collection and analysis are discussed and compared with information coming from the workers. However, stress researchers have criticized the use of self-report job stress measures, because of their potential distortions, and have called for an approach based on the use of objective measures. The Italian law for work-related stress risk assessment, closer to the latter approach, prescribes a two-stage procedure: first, a set of objective measures and then, conditionally to the outcome of the first stage, a set of subjective measures. In this article, we analyze, on the basis of psychometric principles, the tool used for the objective stage in the most adopted method in Italy. Such a tool is a checklist for which we discuss a number of issues, suggesting it is not methodologically well founded. Given the fact that assessment outcomes have a sensible impact on workers’ safety measures, we conclude these weaknesses affect the practice of work-related stress risk assessment.