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Backgrounds: The health of university staff is a major occupational health concern worldwide. Studies have reported low health-related quality of life (HRQOL), low job satisfaction and poor mental health in this occupational group. However, none of previous studies have measured health utility and compared it to a national norm. Therefore, this study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the HRQOL of university staff in China and to identify risk factors influential to their health. Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey conducted in a public university in China. Participants were interviewed face-to-face for demographic and socioeconomic information and health conditions. The Chinese version of the EQ-5D-5L instrument was used to measure HRQOL for calculating health utility. The relationship between health utility and sample characteristics was first examined using t-test and correlation analysis. Multivariate generalized linear models were further applied to evaluate the significance of these associations while adjusting for other variables. Results: The sample (n=154) had a mean age of 40.65 years and slightly more females (51.30%). The overall prevalence of diseases or symptoms was 81.17%. Participants attained the means (SDs) of 0.945 (0.073) and 83.00 (11.32) for the health utility and visual analogue scale respectively. The most affected domain was the anxiety/depression with 40.26% of participants reporting problems and 37.66% of the sample reported problems in the pain/discomfort domain. There were less than 5% participants reported problems in the mobility, self-care or daily activity domains individually. Multivariate models revealed that psychological/emotional conditions were associated with the largest utility loss of -0.067 (95%CI: -0.089, -0.045) followed by having a Master’s degree or higher (-0.048, 95%CI: -0.09, -0.005) and pain in body parts other than head, neck and back (-0.034, 95%CI: -0.055, -0.014).Conclusions: University staff in China may have worse HRQOL than the general population, which manifested mainly with the pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression domains. The significant factors for utility loss were having a Master’s degree or higher, psychological conditions and pain in body parts other than the head, neck and back. Targeted health promotion policies and programs should be created to benefit this occupational group and society overall. |
