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Health-Related Quality of Life of Young Chinese Civil Servants Working in Local Government: Comparison of SF-12 and EQ5D

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Abstract

As the occupational group that delivers public services, civil servants confront a particular working property and environment. Previous studies indicate that this professional group suffers from issues of occupational health, especially mental problems. This study investigates the group’s general health condition from the perspective of health-related quality of life (HRQOL). The samples of the study consist of young civil servants working in the local government agencies of six relatively economically developed cities in eastern China. The five-dimensional European quality of health scale (EQ5D) and the twelve-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12) are employed. We will compare the measuring differences between two measurements and discussed the feasibility of combing two. Results indicate that 75.5 % of the respondents have an undergraduate-level educational degree and below and that 72.7 % of the job position consists of the township staff level and below. The participants report unfavorable HRQOL measurement scores, particularly in the dimension of mental health. Low education and employment grade are two important negative factors. The dimensions of SF-12 and EQ5D are significantly correlated. EQ5D is more sensitive to the gender factor, whereas SF-12 has a higher sensitivity to the employment grade factor. We suggest that the results of these two scales are comparable and that they complement each other.

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Notes

  1. According to the Civil Servant Law of the People’s Republic of China, the employment grade of China’s civil servants is also called cadre personnel institution. It can be divided into five levels: national, provincial/ministerial, department/bureaucracy, county/division, and township/section staff level. Each level has chief and deputy positions. Therefore, in the classification of positions in local governmental agencies, the highest is the county/division chief level, followed by the county/division deputy, township/section chief, with the township/section staff as the lowest level (Zhang and Zhou 2010).

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China: Health related quality of life (HRQOL) and professional social work intervention model for earthquake survivors of post disaster reconstruction: a follow-up survey of six earthquake hit areas in Lushan (71473117), and Research on the interaction between local government ecological management and the development of green community volunteer organization – A Study on the construction of green ecological city in Yangtze River Delta (71173099), and the key project of the National Social Science Fund (14AZZ001). The authors also want to thank Lei Wang (College of sciences, Northeastern University) for his contribution to this study.

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  1. Department of Social Work, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei, Taiwan

    Peiyi Lu

  2. Department of Social Work and Social Policy, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Liang

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Peiyi Lu and Ying Liang are co-first authors.

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Lu, P., Liang, Y. Health-Related Quality of Life of Young Chinese Civil Servants Working in Local Government: Comparison of SF-12 and EQ5D. Applied Research Quality Life 11, 1445–1464 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-015-9446-3

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