Effort-reward imbalance and overcommitment in employees in a Norwegian municipality: a cross sectional study

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to validate a Norwegian version of the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (ERI-Q). METHODS One thousand eight-hundred and three employees in a medium-sized Norwegian municipality replied to the ERI-Q, and health-related variables such as self-reported general health, psychological distress, musculoskeletal complaints, and work-related burnout were examined. RESULTS Sound psychometric properties were found for this Norwegian version of the ERI-Q. When the two dimensions of ERI and overcommitment were analyzed in four types of employees, the results showed that employees characterized by a combination of high values on ERI and overcommitment had more unfavorable health scores than others. Employees with low effort-reward and overcommitment scores had more favorable health scores. Employees with scores on the overcommitment and the effort-reward scales that are supposed to have opposite effects on health (that is, the combination of low overcommitment with a high effort-reward score and vice versa), had health scores somewhere in between the two other groups. CONCLUSION Satisfactory psychometric properties were found for most of the latent factors in the ERI-Q. The findings also indicate that it may be fruitful to explore health conditions among employees with different combinations of effort-reward and overcommitment.