Background

Increasing attention on workplace wellbeing and growth in workplace wellbeing interventions has highlighted the need to measure workers’ wellbeing. Quantifying workers’ wellbeing enables the status of workplace wellbeing to be assessed, and efficacy of interventions to be evaluated.  

Aims

This systematic review sought to identify the most valid and reliable measure/s of wellbeing for workers developed between 2010 to 2020.

Method

Articles describing development of wellbeing measures for workers were included if published between 2010 and 2020 and available in English. The electronic databases Health and Psychosocial Instruments, APA PsycInfo, and Scopus were searched. Key search terms included variations of [wellbeing OR “well-being”] AND [employee* OR worker* OR staff OR personnel]. Studies and properties of wellbeing measures were then appraised using COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement Instruments.

Results

Eighteen articles reported development of new wellbeing instruments and eleven undertook a psychometric validation of an existing wellbeing instrument in a specific country, language or context. Generation and pilot testing of items for the 18 newly developed instruments were largely rated ‘Inadequate’; only two were rated as 'Very Good'. None of the studies reported measurement properties of responsiveness, criterion validity, or content validity. The three instruments with the greatest number of positively rated measurement properties were the Personal Growth and Development Scale, The University of Tokyo Occupational Mental Health well-being 24 scale, and the Employee Well-being scale. However, none of these newly developed worker wellbeing instruments met the criteria for adequate instrument design.

Conclusion

This review provides researchers and clinicians a synthesis of information to help inform appropriate instrument selection in measurement of workers’ wellbeing. Given that most measurement properties of newly developed workers’ wellbeing instruments were not reported, there remain many opportunities for establishing and validating measurement properties of recently developed instruments.