Prior research linking job stressors to psychological strains has been limited to a small number of emotional reactions. This article describes research linking job stressors to a wide range of affective states at work. In Study 1, a multidimensional scaling procedure was used on a matrix of similarity judgments by 51 employees of 56 job-related affective statements to support a 2-dimensional view of affective well-being. In Study 2, ratings of the affect statements by 100 employees further supported the contention that the dimensions were pleasure-displeasure and degree of arousal. In Study 3, 114 full-time university employees responded to the Job-Related Affective Well-Being Scale, which was found to be related to measures of job stressors as well as job satisfaction and physical symptoms.

Factor analyses of scales that contain items written in opposite directions sometimes show two factors, each of which contains items written in only one direction. Such item direction factors have been found in scales of affect and personality that have been used in organizational research. We discuss how patterns of subject responses to items that vary in direction and extremity can produce an arttfactual two factor structure in the absence of multiple constructs. Response patterns are demonstrated in Study 1 with job satisfaction data gathered from employed subjects. The production of two factors is illustrated in Study 2 with simulated data based on item response characteristic equations.

The hypothesized role of the personality trait negative affectivity (NA) in employee reactions to jobs has been debated in recent years. Some researchers have argued that this dispositional variable biases self‐reports of job‐related variables, whereas others have argued that its role is substantive in that NA might affect or be affected by job variables. This study tested competing hypotheses concerning relations of two measures of NA with both incumbent and non‐incumbent measures. Results supported the substantive and not the bias hypothesis: NA correlated significantly with non‐incumbent, but not with incumbent, measures of job characteristics.

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