International WDQ website - Access to publications, items, contact details

The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ, Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006) is a comprehensive instrument for the analysis of jobs and workplaces from an industrial and organizational psychology perspective. Decades of research provides evidence that optimizing jobs, tasks, and workplaces according to psychological criteria can reduce burnout, diminish stress, foster health, improve (intrinsic) motivation and lead to not only satisfaction but also better performance (Humphrey, Nahrgang & Morgeson, 2007; Parker, 2014). The WDQ was developed in order to provide a larger range of options for designing jobs than older instruments. It was also developed to foster research in the domain of work design by providing researchers with a larger pool of potentially relevant variables to include in their models. Unlike other job design instruments, the WDQ is not based on a specific work design theory. Rather it has been developed as an attempt to summarize the work characteristics existing in the literature so far. Studies regarding the reliability and validity of the measures have been published for the American original (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006), as well as some translations (e.g., Stegmann et al., 2010).

Since its original publication in 2006, the WDQ has been translated into many different languages. It thus provides a unique opportunity to compare results between different countries and cultures. The purpose of this website is to provide access to and information about the different translations of the WDQ, as well as names and contacts of researchers responsible for each translation.

References:

  • Humphrey, S. E., Nahrgang, J. D. & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: A meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(5), 1332-1356.
  • Morgeson, F. P. & Humphrey, S. E. (2006). The Work Design Questionnaire (WDQ): Developing and validating a comprehensive measure for assessing job design and the nature of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(6), 1321-1339.
  • Parker, S. K. (2014). Beyond motivation: job and work design for development, health, ambidexterity, and more. Annu Rev Psychol, 65, 661-691.
  • Stegmann, S., van Dick, R., Ullrich, J., Charalambous, J., Menzel, B., Egold, N.et al. (2010). Der Work Design Questionnaire – Vorstellung und erste Validierung einer deutschen Version. Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie, 54(1), 1-28.