Job decision latitude, organizational justice and health: multilevel covariance structure analysis

A total of 2969 hospital employees from 162 wards participated in a 2-year follow-up study that examined the relationship between job decision latitude, organizational justice and employee health in Finland. We used medically certified sickness absence records as indicators of health problems. Multilevel covariance structure analysis was applied to take into account the hierarchical nature of the data. Responses from individuals within work units seem not always to be independent, and any models that ignore this lack of independence may incorrectly estimate the between individual relationships. Our results suggest that both job decision latitude and organizational justice varied considerably between work units in addition to individual level variation. Furthermore job decision latitude was associated with organizational justice both at individual and work unit level. Justice evaluations predicted sickness absence only at the individual level.