WORKPLACE WELLBEING QUESTION BANK
Workplace wellbeing
What Works Centre for Wellbeing
www.whatworkswellbeing.org
@whatworksWB
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Using the question bank
1. Choosing the questions to include in your survey
Questions have been identied to cover the main wellbeing at work dimensions. We
recommend that your survey includes questions that cover all the main domains. We also
recognise that longer surveys have their limitations. For example, we helped to develop a
shorter survey that includes a much narrower subset of these questions, which has been
recommended by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Adding more detailed questions on one theme
Your survey might also benet from adding more detailed modules on specic themes.
For example, you may be more interested in looking at the wellbeing eects of irregular
working hours which is diicult to capture through a single item.
Avoiding duplication of questions
You may notice that some questions tap into the same, or very similar, indicators. You
can make your questionnaire more eicient by incorporating only one. For example, the
statements ‘after I leave my work I keep worrying about job problems’ (I.7) and ‘I nd it
diicult to unwind at the end of a workday’ (I.8) both measure negative spillovers of working
life into employees’ private lives. You can choose the one that best suits your sample of
respondents.
2. Getting the wording and answer scales for each question right
Adapting the wording of questions
Because the questions are taken from a number of dierent surveys, you may want to make
sure the question wording is as clear, consistent and relevant as possible, with appropriate
preamble and denitions of terms, when using them in your survey.
This is possible to do, but to compare your responses with benchmark data you will need to
make sure the questions’ meaning and key words are not changed.
Changing terms and pronouns
To give an example, you may want to change ‘You know what is expected of you at work’
(item D.5) to use the rst person pronoun. It would then read: ‘I know what is expected of
me at work’ to t with the phrasing of other items in your survey.
Similarly, you may nd it useful to change terms such as ‘your immediate boss’ (item H.3) to
‘your line manager’ (item H.2) in order to harmonise the questions.
Clarifying terms and reducing bias
Other terms might benet from further clarication. For example, in the statement ‘I have
the tools I need to do my job eectively’ (J.3), the term ‘tools’ can be interpreted as internal
resources such as knowledge and skills, while other respondents are likely to interpret it in
terms of systems and equipment.
Another example of a misinterpretation risk that can introduce response bias is the
statement ‘I might lose my job in the next 6 months’ (E.2). The item is aimed at capturing