Using single-item measures to examine the relationships between work, personality, and well-being in the workplace

Measuring the well-being of employees through questionnaire measures can give a useful indication of the positive or negative mental health of a workforce along with their satisfaction with their circumstances. Furthermore, measuring the antecedents of these outcomes provides a basis for reducing negative outcomes and promoting positive mental health and satisfaction within an organization. This endeavour can quickly become impractical, however, as taking into account the range of possible environmental or personal factors, can lead to a lengthy and burdensome measurement tool. The current paper examines the use of single-items for this purpose, demonstrating that single-item measures of work-related and personality factors exhibit relationships with each other and with outcomes that the literature on well-being predicts. Using multiple-regression analysis, the results show that work related factors such as control and reward provide significant predictors of well-being outcomes including job satisfaction, while personality factors such as self-esteem and self-efficacy are significant predictors of all outcome measures. Furthermore, variations in the relationships with specific outcomes and interaction effects are found. The results suggest that using single-item measures may provide a valid approach to investigating well-being in the workplace in circumstances that may require very brief scales.