Demand Control Support Questionnaire (DCSQ)

The 17-item DCSQ includes the three scales of psychological demands (five items), decision latitude (six items), and social support at work (six items) [14]. In our present study, all the 17 items were expressed as statements and the respondents were asked to report their levels of agreement or disagreement on a four-point Likert scale, with higher values indicating higher psychological demands (range 5–20), higher decision latitude (range 6–24), and higher social support at work (range 6–24). All scale scores were calculated by summing up the respective unweighted item scores after appropriate reverse scoring of item 4 (overtime work) and item 9 (variety of work). As an English translated but not validated version of the DCSQ items already existed, there was no translational process from the original Swedish version into English needed. After reviewing national databases on literature of prior use of a German version, one of the authors (P.A.) translated the English DCSQ version into German supported by an English-speaking German translator. This first version was also reviewed and modified by the other German-speaking authors separately to rule out translational problems. All versions were returned to P.A. and consolidated for a consensual version. Finally, this version was approved by Prof. Theorell. Furthermore, a median split of the scale values of the samples were used to calculate low and high levels of psychological demands and decision latitude, and four groups of low strain, active, passive, and high strain were categorized accordingly.