ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of the nature and direction of effects in the relationship between occupational conditions and psychological functioning by attempting to assess the reciprocal relationship between one pivotal dimension of occupational structure, the substantive complexity of work, and one pivotal dimension of psychological functioning, intellectual flexibility. It aims to describe and evaluate the data of the follow-up study. The chapter explains the concepts substantive complexity and intellectual flexibility and develops “measurement models” for both of them. These models are designed to deal with the most perplexing problem of longitudinal analysis—separating errors in measurement from real change in the phenomena studied. The chapter utilizes the data provided by the measurement models to do a causal analysis of the reciprocal effects of substantive complexity and intellectual flexibility. It presents several limitations to the analyses reported and hopes to remedy in further analyses.
