Modern world influences are changing conditions in the labour market. The demand for a flexible work force is prevailing, which leads to unstable work forms. Precarious work is different from usual standards. It is mostly defined with unstability and uncertainty of duration and quantity of work, and also with dangerous working conditions, low salaries etc. This kind of work often means lower living standard of a worker. Measuring objective work precarity is necessary, but it also makes sense to focus on subjective perception of work precarity. It is a concept which means subjective perception of objective conditions of work precarity and it describes an individual psychological experience of unstability, uncertainty and powerlesness connected to work. Work is one of the main human activities and it has an important contribution to mental health of the working population. We assess mental health with general measures or with different indicators (e. g. depression, anxiety, psychological well-being and satisfaction with life). Research shows that higher levels of both kinds of precarity correlate positively with indicators of negative mental health and negatively with indicators of positive mental health. It is assumed that this connection is higher when measuring subjective perception rather than objective aspects. Non-precarious workers display better mental health than the precarious. I was interested if this findings can be applied to Slovenian population. There were full-aged working participants in my sample, who have been employed in any kind of work form at the time. Existing measurements were used for assessing mental health. In addition, I have adapted a scale for assessing subjective work precarity and formed a brief questionnaire for assessing objective precarity for the purposes of my master's thesis. Results mostly showed findings simmilar to the ones in the literature, which shows a two-way negative influence of work precarity and mental health on one another.
|