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The aim of the present study was to explore: the main effect of empowerment on burnout; empowerment as a mediator between the work environment and burnout; and empowerment as a moderator of the association between the work environment and burnout. In order to explore these effects, multiple regression analyses were performed on questionnaire data from 838 registered nurses and 518 assistant nurses in Sweden. The analyses showed that: empowerment has a negative association to burnout; empowerment has a mediating effect between the work environment (especially for control and social support) and burnout; and the moderating effect of empowerment on the association between the work environment and burnout was weak. The results suggest that: empowerment explains variation with regard to burnout over and above what can be explained by established work situation dimensions; the improvement of the work environment is associated with a higher sense of empowerment which, in turn, is related to lower degrees of burnout; and individual and group differences should be considered in workplace health promotion.

The psychometric properties of a Swedish translation of Spreitzer's (1995a) empowerment scale were assessed. Three parallel assessments were made of data from 1,107 female registered nurses, 758 female assistant nurses, and 107 male registered and assistant nurses. The analyses indicated that the psychometric properties of the scale can be considered satisfactory. Suggestions are made regarding future research in the fields of psychometrics and work- and health-psychology.

During the past decade, levels of work-related stress have increased not only in Sweden but in all of Europe. Health care workers in general and nurses in particular have been identified as having a risk of experiencing stress and burnout. Since the objective of health care work is to care for and help other human beings, the demanding elements of the job may involve both generic (e.g. high workload) and occupational specific aspects, e.g. intense interpersonal interactions with patients, being exposed to sickness and death and having substantial responsibilities of providing right treatment to patients, with no room for errors. One way to navigate the demands of the environment is to utilize the help and support provided by coworkers and supervisors. The four empirical studies included in this thesis emphasize the concepts of work-related social support, job demands and burnout and the associations between these concepts, predominantly among health care workers.The majority of previous social support research has investigated how social support affects health. Fewer studies have focused on identifying factors that relate to social support while assessing social support as a dependent variable. The main aim in Study I was to assess different correlates (socio-demographic, individual and organizational/psychosocial) to work-related social support using a diverse sample of private and public employees (n=16144). The result indicated that organisational correlates, particularly perceived job control, were strongest associated with workrelated social support. The main aim in Study II was to perform source-specific analyses of social support in relation to different sub-dimensions of burnout among a sample of registered and assistant nurses (n=1561). The results showed statistically significant correlations between co-worker (patient) support and all three burnout dimensions, whereas supervisor support was statistically significantly related to emotional exhaustion alone. In accordance with prior findings, high levels of job demands were most strongly related to high emotional exhaustion. The main aim of Study III was to develop and psychometrically evaluate a job demand scale that captures specific job demands within health care work using two occupational groups, i.e. (n=795) registered nurses and (n=527) assistant nurses. A congruent component structure was obtained in both occupational samples, consisting of four job demand indices 'pain and death', 'patient and relatives needs', 'threats and violence' and 'professional worries'. The main aim in Study IV was to longitudinally examine the association of generic-and occupational specific job demands and workrelated social support on emotional exhaustion (EE) and depersonalization (DP) over time among a group of registered nurses (n=775). Those nurses with with low and medium scores on EE and DP at T1 were included in the analyses. The results indicated that initial high professional worry was associated with high emotional exhaustion at T2. Unchanged high scores ove...

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