This study investigates the relationship between need satisfaction and positive and negative health. The dataset comes from a survey administered in several colleges and universities in Norway, led by a visiting scholar at Berkeley, Siw Tone Innstrand. Innstrand, along with Christina Maslach and Cristina Banks, examined the scales used in the survey designed to examine engagement for academics, administrators, and graduate students, and several outcomes including health. Scales were identified as representing one of each of the eight needs identified in the HealthyWorkplaces Model. Responses to survey items were correlated with responses to the questions regarding employee health. The intent of the analysis was to determine whether needs were related to positive and negative health, and whether there were differences in the relationships between needs and health due to gender or occupational group.
A follow-up study
Understanding Healthy Workplaces: Cross-cultural Comparisons between Norway and the United States
Investigators: Siw Tone Innstrand, PhD, Christina Maslach, PhD, Cristina Banks, PhD, Kirsi Heikkilä-Tammi, PhD
This cross-cultural project has been awarded a Peder Sather Grant in the amount of $25,000 to develop an improved survey tool (a Healthy Workplace Index) as well as an integrated and comprehensive model of healthy universities. Having worked together on the “Exploring Basic Psychological Needs and Health Among Academics” project, Dr. Siw Tone Innstrand from NTNU, Dr. Christina Maslach and Dr. Cristina Banks from UC Berkeley will continue to collaborate to create a more general model for healthy and sustainable working, learning and living environments by incorporating previous knowledge and performing cross-cultural comparisons of Universities in Norway and the United States.