In recent years, the concept of job control or decision latitude has increasingly been incorporated into many studies in the medical literature looking at a wide range of aspects of physical health. This is largely due to the success of Karasek’s model in offering a simple framework enabling key work variables central to his theory of job strain to be measured using brief scales. Thus, it has been suggested that high demands and low control (i.e. job strain) are related to musculoskeletal disorders (e.g. neck pain) in sales people (Skov et al., 1996) and adverse outcome of pregnancy in clerical and commercial workers (Brandt & Nielsen, 1992). Job strain has also been shown to be associated with non-medical drug use (Storr et al., 1999). There is less evidence for associations in the fewstudies that have looked at cancer risk (Achat et al., 2000; Courtney et al., 1996; Van Loon et al., 2000). However, the bulk of the literature focuses on cardiovascular disease and the associated risk factors. Read the rest of this entry »