Documents Julià, Mireia 3 results

"Objectives
The aims of this position paper are to (i) summarize research on precarious employment (PE) in the context of occupational health; (ii) develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes PE from related concepts and delineates important contextual factors; and (iii) identify key methodological challenges and directions for future research on PE and health.
Methods
This position paper is the result of a working group consisting of researchers from the EU, Turkey and the USA, who have discussed the issue over the course of six months (October 2018–April 2019), meeting both online and face-to-face on several occasions.
Results
The lack of a common theoretical framework of PE hinders it from becoming an established part of occupational and public health research. There are also issues regarding operationalization in surveys and registers. Further, previous research on PE and health suffers from methodological limitations including inadequate study designs and biased assessments of exposure and outcomes. PE is highly dependent on contextual factors and cross-country comparison has proven very difficult. We also point to the uneven social distribution of PE, ie, higher prevalence among women, immigrants, young and low educated. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding precarious employment as a multidimensional construct.
Conclusions
A generally accepted multidimensional definition of PE should be the highest priority. Future studies would benefit from improved exposure assessment, temporal resolution, and accounting for confounders, as well as testing possible mechanisms, eg, by adopting multi-level and intersectional analytical approaches in order to understand the complexity of PE and its relation to health."

"The adverse effects of precarious employment on mental health are well-established, yet the mediating mechanisms require further elucidation to understand their impact. In line with Allan et al.'s (2021), work precarity framework, subjective psychological experiences (in this study, job insecurity, moral distress, and work/family (in)balance) are investigated as mediating mechanisms linking the “objective situation of precarious employment” (using the EPRES scale) to mental health. As hypothesized, psychological experiences of work precarity mediate the detrimental effects of precarious employment on mental health in a large sample of Belgian and Finnish healthcare workers (n = 9041). These findings provide a novel exploration of the complex mediational pathway of subjective psychological experiences. Our study thereby offers evidence for an explanatory model that reconciles materialist and psychological understandings of the relation between precarious employment and mental health."

"Women are more exposed to precarious employment and psychosocial risk factors than men. Precarious employment was associated with poorer mental health in both sexes; the association was greater among women.
Among men, psychosocial risks had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between precarious employment and mental health, while among women, they had a total mediating effect. Low social support was the factor that contributes the most to the mediating effect in both sexes."