A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF WORK CHARACTERISTICS AND HEALTH COMPLAINTS AMONG INSURANCE EMPLOYEES IN VDT WORK

Employees using visual display terminals (VDT) in their work in the he ad office and branch offices of a Finnish insurance company were follo wed for 8 years. Their job satisfaction and health complaints were stu died in relation to VDT-use characteristics and job demands and stress ors. A total of 144 employees participated 3 times in a questionnaire survey: in 1985 before a major change was implemented in the data syst em used, just after its implementation in 1987, and later after the gr adual increase of VDT application and enlargement of the data system i n 1993. Most of the employees were women (65%) in customer service wor k. The original group of 477 decreased to these 144 employees during t he follow-up due to employees leaving the company, moving to other dep artments, retiring, and nonresponding. The dropouts did not differ con siderably from the retainees in the central variables of the study. Th e follow-up results showed an increase in the daily amount of VDT work and a better mastering of VDT applications. Only minor changes in job demands were found. A slight increase occurred between 1985 and 1987 in attention and psychomotor demands. The greatest increase was found in job insecurity between 1987 and 1993. The level of job dissatisfact ion, psychological symptoms, and eye discomfort decreased somewhat, an d neck and upper limb complaints increased between the two later study phases. The factors explaining job dissatisfaction and subjective sym ptoms were partly different in the 3 study phases. In the last study p hase, job dissatisfaction was dependent on job insecurity, being earli er explained mainly by psychological and social job demands. Neck and upper limb complaints were in the beginning clearly related to high ph ysical workload and later more directly dependent on VDT-use character istics. Eye discomfort was explained inconsistently by various factors . In conclusion, the results of the subjective symptoms became more de pendent directly on VDT characteristics after the major implementation of new VDT applications and as the follow-up proceeded. The results a lso indicated that in changing work life no constant explanatory model for the subjective symptoms could be found.