Abstract
To investigate the quality of life, life satisfaction, happiness and demands of work in workers with different work schedules. The survey was carried out on professional workers in social care. Some were shiftworkers whose schedule included night shifts (N=311), some were shiftworkers without night shifts (N=207) and some were non-shiftworkers (N=1,210). Surveys were mailed and the response rate was 86%. For the purpose of this study several variables were selected from the Survey: The Quality of Life Profile, which measures importance, satisfaction, control and opportunities in nine domains of life plus measures of happiness, life satisfaction and demands of work. While both groups of shiftworkers, compared to non-shiftworkers, reported needing more physical effort to complete their work, and reported 'being' more physically tired, no differences were found in reports of overall happiness, life satisfaction or total quality of life. However, night-shiftworkers reported greater percentage of time unhappy than the other two groups of workers. In analyses of the quality of life, night-shiftworkers were less satisfied with domains of spiritual 'being' and physical and community 'belonging' than day-shiftworkers and non-shiftworkers. They also reported having fewer opportunities to improve their physical 'being', leisure, and personal growth than the other two groups. Quality of life in specific domains in night-shiftworkers was rated worse than in other groups of workers. Domain-based quality of life assessment gives more information regarding the particular needs of workers than overall or global measures of well-being.
Highlights
The disruptive effects of shiftwork on the social and domestic lives of workers are well documented.[7,8,13,18,20] Working in shifts creates difficulties in family life and tends to restrict worker’s social and leisure activities.[10]
We examined differences in quality of life of nine specific subdomains between groups of workers, as well as the estimates of control and opportunities to enhance each of subdomain
Opportunities ses of covariance (ANCOVAs) with repeated measures were used. Those analyses were done separately for night shiftworkers, day-shiftworkers and non-shiftworkers, with age included as covariate
Summary
The disruptive effects of shiftwork on the social and domestic lives of workers are well documented.[7,8,13,18,20] Working in shifts creates difficulties in family life and tends to restrict worker’s social and leisure activities.[10]. Workers in 12-hour shifts reported less social and domestic disruption than workers in 8-hour shifts.[8,6]
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