The effect of job strain and worksite social support on reported side effects of COVID-19 vaccine: a prospective study of employees in Japan

  1. Natsu Sasaki
  2. Reiko Kuroda
  3. Kanami Tsuno
  4. Kotaro Imamura
  5. Norito Kawakami

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Abstract

Objectives

This prospective study aimed to examine the association of job demands, job control, and the lack of supervisor and coworker support with side effects after receiving COVID-19 vaccination in a sample of employees in Japan.

Methods

The data were retrieved from an online panel of full-time employees (E- COCO- J). The analysis included participants who were employed and were not vaccinated at baseline (June 2021) but received vaccination at a four-month follow-up (October 2021). An 11-item scale measured the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Four types of psychosocial working conditions (i.e., job demands, job control, and supervisor and coworker support) were measured using the Brief Job Stress Questionnaire (BJSQ). Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between the psychosocial working conditions and side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, adjusting for gender, age, educational attainment, marital status, occupation, chronic disease, dose of vaccination, anxiety from potential side effects of vaccines, fear and worry about COVID-19, and psychological distress at baseline.

Results

Overall, 747 employees were included in the analysis. The average number of side effects was 3.78 (SD=2.19): Arm pain (81.1%), fatigues (64.1%), muscle pains (63.3%), and fever (37.5 degrees Celsius +) (53.5%) were reported more frequently. Coworker support score was significantly and negatively associated with the numbers of side effects (standardized β=-0.122, p=0.017). Women, young age, second time vaccination, and high psychological distress were significantly associated with several side effects.

Conclusions

Employees with low coworker support may be more likely to have side effects after COVID-19 vaccinations. The findings of this study could inform employees with low coworker support that increasing workplace support may reduce the side effects.

Highlights

  • ⍰

    The effect of poor psychosocial working conditions on side effects after COVID-19 vaccinations was unknown.

  • ⍰

    Poor coworker support at baseline was significantly associated with increased side effects after COVID-19 vaccinations.

  • ⍰

    Informing workers with low coworker support about the findings may help them prepare for the side effect and motivate them to improve coworker support to reduce side effects.

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    1. ScreenIT

      SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.24.22271484: (What is this?)

      Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

      Table 1: Rigor

      EthicsIRB: The Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Medicine/Faculty of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, approved this study, No. 10856-(2)(3)(4)(5).
      Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
      Randomizationnot detected.
      Blindingnot detected.
      Power Analysisnot detected.

      Table 2: Resources

      Software and Algorithms
      SentencesResources
      SPSS 28.0 (IBM Corp) Japanese version was used.
      SPSS
      suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

      Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

      Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
      Strengths and limitations: The strength of this study was the prospective nature of the study design. This study showed direct and indirect effects of the psychosocial working conditions on the immune function. However, the present study had several limitations. First, self-reported measures were used to assess the psychosocial working conditions and side effects. People with poor working conditions or high distress may have overreported the side effects. Besides, employees with low coworker support may be easily conscious of side effects because fewer people around them take over their work, so they are more concerned about the impact on their work. Second, this study did not consider other psychosocial conditions other than job demand, job control, and workplace social support. Other factors should be investigated in future research. Third, generalizability was limited because the participants were full-time employees in Japan, and the data were retrieved from the online panel. Fourth, the significant association found in this study could have been superficial, as other potential confounding factors could have affected the results. Fifth, this study addressed only a very short-term innate immune response to vaccination but did not examine the effects on cellular or humoral immunity after vaccination and over longer period. The previous meta-analysis revealed a negative association between stress and antibody production after influenza vaccinations [34]. In addition, several...

      Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

      Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

      Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

      Results from rtransparent:
      • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
      • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
      • No protocol registration statement was detected.

      Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

      About SciScore

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    2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.24.22271484v1 on medRxiv