Authors
Ruth Schäfers, Paul Maurice Conway, Hermann Burr, Uwe Rose
Published in
International archives of occupational and environmental health. Volume 99. Issue 9. Nov 10, 2026. Epub Nov 10, 2026.
Abstract
The association between psychosocial working conditions and depressive symptoms is well established. Going beyond the association, the present study aimed to identify optimal cut-off values for psychosocial working conditions using depressive symptoms as criterion.
Data from the cohort study named Study on Mental Health at Work (S-MGA) were analysed using a representative sample of employees subject to social insurance at baseline and follow-up (2011/2012, n = 4,511; 2017, n = 2,637). Psychosocial working conditions were measured at baseline using eight scales from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ), all ranging from 0 to 4, while depressive symptoms were measured at follow-up using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9; dichotomised). Cut-off values were determined by selecting the optimal combination of the corresponding sensitivity and 1 - specificity for each possible cut-off value. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves illustrate the discriminatory power of the COPSOQ scales for classifying participants as cases with or without depressive symptoms.
The analyses revealed that the optimal cut-off values for the selected COPSOQ scales ranged from 1.38 to 3.50. Area under the curve (AUC) values ranged from 0.51 (95% CI 0.47-0.54) to 0.61 (95% CI 0.57-0.64).
The method used allows to identify one optimal cut-off value on each COPSOQ scale. Due to the low discriminatory power of the COPSOQ scales for classifying individuals with depressive symptoms, the benefit of using the identified cut-off values as a classification tool is limited.
PMID:
43007490
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 11 Nov 2026.
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