The Purposes of Expert Items

1) Gain additional workplace information that may not be available to workers
2) Allow comparisons between management, union and worker responses to the same question -- not only for validation, but to assess whether discrepancies between such responses predict health outcomes
3) Reduce the number of questions required in employee surveys

As a result of these different purposes, there will be different categories of "expert" questions. Some will be the same questions that are asked of workers, and some will be new questions about more general industry, union, workplace and organizational change issues. I have drafted a list of questions covering general company issues and organizational level decision latitude (based on the proposed JCQ 2.0 pilot and Bob Karasek's discussion of possible expert items).