Longitudinal psychological empowerment profiles, their determinants, and some health-related outcomes

ABSTRACT

This research relies on bifactor models to help improve our understanding of the dimensionality of the psychological empowerment construct. We also examined the configurations, or profiles, taken by psychological empowerment dimensions, and documented their stability over time as well as the associations between these profiles and theoretically-relevant predictors (workload, supervisor support, overall organizational justice, and role clarity) and outcomes (alcohol consumption, sleeping difficulties, and depressive symptoms). A sample of 750 healthcare workers completed a questionnaire twice over a one-year period. First, our results showed that employees’ psychological empowerment ratings simultaneously reflected a global overarching construct co-existing with four specific dimensions (competence, impact, meaning, and self-determination). Then, five profiles were identified and found to be highly stable over time: Low Empowerment, Moderately High Empowerment and Impact, Normative, High Empowerment, and Moderately High Empowerment and High Meaning. Role clarity was also associated with a higher likelihood of membership into the High Empowerment profile and a lower likelihood of membership into the Low Empowerment one relative to the other profiles. Finally, employees’ depressive symptoms were the highest in the Low Empowerment profile.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological empowerment
• latent transition analyses
• job demands and resources
• health
• bifactor models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2023.2170227

Additional information

Funding

PREPS CHRYSALIDE Ministère des Solidarités et de la Santé, France