A study on the usefulness of stress assessment based on the THP health measurement - Comparison with the General Health Questionnaire

Although the 'Total Health Promotion Plan (THP)' drawn up by the Labor Ministry includes a self-administered stress checklist (THP-SC) as a health measurement, THP-SC has not been utilized in the way that it had been planned. Hence, we studied the usefulness of this list by comparing it with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). We made a questionnaire that included both THP-SC and the 60-item GHQ, and collected answers from 261 white-collar workers (male, average age 43.7). The GHQ was evaluated using the Goldberg's method. When analyzing THP-SC, the number of answers indicating stress was counted, and the respondents were divided into two groups based on the cut-off points of 75 percentile or 90 percentile. In the 60-item GHQ, 48 respondents out of 243 with valid answers had a higher score than the cut-off point, and in the 12-item GHQ, 77 out of 256 had a higher seore. The average number of THP-SC was 5.67 ± 3.19. Concerning the relationship with GHQ, many items of the 'A' section of THP-SC were significant. The comparison also suggested that four or more items checked in 'A' section or seven or more items checked in the whole list would mean that a respondent may be under stress.