Impact of smoking status on workplace absenteeism and productivity
Michael T Halpern, Richard Shikiar, Anne M Rentz, Zeba M Khan

The Health and Work Questionnaire (HWQ) (available here as a downloadable pdf file) was used by Halpern et al to subjectively assess the impact of smoking status on workplace productivity. The HWQ was developed to assess various aspects of productivity without completely relying on direct subjective estimation. Unlike other productivity assessment tools, the HWQ was designed to be a multidimensional measure of productivity. The HWQ consists of 24 questions, several of which were multi-part questions, comprising six subscales. All items have a ten-point response scale, tailored to each question (e.g. "very dissatisfied" to "very satisfied" for questions dealing with work satisfaction; "my worst ever" to "my best ever" for questions dealing with rating quantity, quality, and efficiency of work). Additional details regarding the HWQ are presented in the Halpern et al. paper. Copyright of the HWQ is owned by the GlaxoSmithKline Group of Companies (Copyright 2000).

Please note that the contact details of the corresponding author for this article have now changed.  Dr Halpern can now be contacted at:

Michael T. Halpern, M.D., Ph.D.
Principal Scientist, Health Group
Exponent, Inc.
310 Montgomery St.
Alexandria, VA  22314
USA
Tel: (703) 518-2641
Fax: (703) 549-4225
E-mail: mhalpern{at}exponent.com