The number of health promotion programs delivered in the American workplace has risen dramatically during the past decade. Although a long list of presumed benefits has been used to justify the initiation of occupational health promotion programs, an empirically-based understanding is still evolving. Reviews of the scientific literature raise several important questions, including: * Do lifestyle factors influence mental health and work-related behavior in vulnerable employee populations? * Does an employee's mental health mediate the relationships between lifestyle factors and organizationally valued outcomes (e.g., increased job performance and reduced absenteeism and health care costs)? * In addition to traditionally targeted behavioral factors, should occupational health promotion programs attempt to influence psychosocial aspects of an employee's lifestyle? * How do we obtain valid measures of employee lifestyle, mental health, and work-related behavior? The proposed research is designed to answer these questions. We will make use of an emerging analysis technology. confirmatory factor analysis of multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) data, (1) to understand the process through which lifestyle factors predict the mental health and organizationally valued outcomes of lower level employees, and (2) to understand and control for response bias in the measurement of these constructs. The results will have direct implications for the improvement of lifestyle, mental health, and work behavior measurement, and for developing efficacious occupational health promotion programs.
