The Cross-Sectional Association of Scales from the Job Content Questionnaire 2 (JCQ 2.0) with Burnout and Affective Commitment Among German Employees

The Job Content Questionnaire JCQ 2.0 (JCQ 2.0) thoroughly revises the well-known JCQ 1, based on an expanded Demand/Control theory-consistent platform with new scales, the Associationalist Demand Control (ADC) theory. This study tests the JCQ 2.0 in an urban population in Germany ( N = 2326) for concurrent validity of each specific task and organizational-level scale and the relative importance of the task and organizational-level scales, using burnout and commitment as outcome measures. Cross-sectional regression analyses in the test and validation samples were run after multiple imputation. Five JCQ 2.0 task-level scales explain 44% of burnout variance; three JCQ 2.0 task-level scales explain 25% of commitment variance. Adding organizational-level scales, organizational disorder and rewards, increases the explained variance for burnout by five percentage points; consideration of workers’ interests and reward add four percentage points of variance for commitment. Organizational-level scales alone explain 33% and 28% of the variance in burnout and commitment, respectively, due to three and five organizational-level scales for both outcomes. Thus, the JCQ 2.0 task and organizational-level scales show substantial relations to work- and health-related outcomes, with task level more relevant for burnout and organizational level more relevant for commitment. The most strongly related JCQ 2.0 scales have evolved from new ADC theory, confirming its utility.